Speaker
Main supervisor (name and email)<br>and his / her institution
Prof Simon Connell, shconnell@uj.ac.za
Level for award<br> (Hons, MSc, <br> PhD)?
PhD
Apply to be<br> considered for a student <br> award (Yes / No)?
yes
Would you like to <br> submit a short paper <br> for the Conference <br> Proceedings (Yes / No)?
yes
Abstract content <br> (Max 300 words)<br><a href="http://events.saip.org.za/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=0&confId=34" target="_blank">Formatting &<br>Special chars</a>
Mineral-PET is a technology for the sorting of diamond bearing rock (kimberlite ore) based on a mineral analogue of the well-known medical Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging technique. The naturally occurring carbon in kimberlite needs to be activated via photonuclear transmutation before it can be imaged. For the R&D phase of the project, a technology demonstrator has been built. This is a planar PET array built around a conveyor belt using kimberlite phantoms. The phantoms consist of blocks of cement with the radioactive material (Na-22) uniformly distributed throughout it to simulate the homogenous background radiation from various non-diamond PET emitters. Diamonds are modeled in the phantom by the inclusion of a localized “hot-spot” of Na-22. This system has been used to benchmark computational simulations and to explore the physics issues for the specification of a pilot scale plant at a mine. The review will provide new results and updates on the performance and outlook for Mineral-PET.
