The Salt: Luminescently Cooked

Title: The Salt: Luminescently Cooked
Author: Dr. A. Nabachandra Singh
ISBN: 978-93-82395-72-0
Language: English
Category: Chemistry
First Edition: January, 2015
Binding: Hard Cover

About the Book:
Thermally stimulated luminescence (TSL), generally known as thermoluminescence (TL) may be considered to be the flagship method of all Thermally Stimulated Processes (TSPs). An enormous amount of energy and intellectual effort has been expended for the last seven decades since the pioneering works of Randall and Wilkins, Garlic and Gibson and others to extract model parameters from TL glow peaks. Despite major success in the understanding of the process of TL, this goal still remains one of the most difficult jobs to attain. The basic difficulty lies in the inherent “degeneracy” of the analytical results in that more than one set of parameters and often, more than one model, can yield theoretical curves which fit the experimental ones with acceptable accuracy.

Extracting model parameters is not the only worthwhile goal of TL studies. As for example, successful applications of this phenomenon have been made in:
i) Dosimetry of natural and artificial radiation fields i.e. in medical physics, radiation protection, archeo- and geochronology etc.
ii) Dating of natural and artificial samples which had been buried under for a long time.

The heart of the dosimetry is the integration of a relevant glow peak or a part of the glow curve. Since glow curves are in general complex, consisting of a number of glow peaks (including unstable ones) in addition to the one useful for dosimetry. Thermoluminescence dosimetry (TLD) workers often used suitable pre-heat treatment or fading for few days to remove the unwanted, unstable signal. In addition, background also causes hindrance for weak signal. In order to overcome these, the community of TLD workers have resorted to Computerized Glow Curve Deconvolution (CGCD), which is essentially fitting the glow peaks to the numerically generated one.

Around the world, four methods have been broadly categorized for extracting/refining salt (Scientific name as Sodium Chloride with symbol NaCl). They may be summarized as follows:-

Ø   refining of common salt through natural way.

Ø   from mineral rock-salt of the crust

Ø   by heating saline water.

Ø   by chemical method

Natural salts available in Manipur (India) in different forms from different sources i.e. from rock-salt of the crust as well as from saline springs have been characterized and studied the TL properties to find the dosimetry properties.

Radiation therapy is an important technique for the treatment of cancer. The intention of this work is to provide all the fundamental tools necessary to characterize and embark upon the application f TL in dosimetry using natural salt that could be compared to dosimetric materials like common iodised salt (NaCl : I), which is non-toxic and easily available.