Question

question about techniques to detect radioactive material
Scenario:
Radioactive material, Cs-137, might be attached to air-borne particles. There
is a need to determine in real-time the number of air-borne particles per unit volume and total activity of the particles per unit volume. The air-borne particles are expected to have diameters in the range of 1 um to 100um.

The task is to provide a conceptual design for an instrument to estimate in nominally real-time the concentration of air-borne particles, the overall activity of the air-borne particles per unit volume, the pressure across an air filter, the relative humidity, the air flow rate, and the volume that is being sampled. In addition, it is required to investigate PID control of a heated volume. The surface of this volume might be treated with a proprietary detection material that requires a well-defined temperature for operation.

The instrument will be employed in or around a plenum of cross-sectional area of 0.3m^2, with an air flow rate in the range of 100 l/s to 500 l/s. The plenum contains a 4 inch deep air filter rated as MERV-13, such as an AmAir 1300.