L. Bivolarsky
Perceptive Sensors Technology, Inc.,,
United States
Keywords: nanotubes, ultrasound, transducers, advanced materials, fluids, material properties, material identification
Summary:
Pipes and pipelines are commonly used to transport fluids. Water pipes transport potable and sewer water in urban areas, pipes are used to transport chemicals within factories, and pipelines are used within the oil and gas industry for transporting petroleum products within refineries or between various locations. Similarly, various containers and vessels are often used to store fluids, such as oil storage tanks, chemical storage vessels. Type of fluid within the vessel, container, pipes, or pipelines, can be determined by using acoustic-based methods. Acoustic signals are commonly used for determining the material identity of fluids, or otherwise assessing fluids and other materials within containers and pipelines, including those used to store oil and gas within the petroleum industry. There are many reasons to use acoustic waves for measurements of fluids or other materials in a container or other type of enclosures. Acoustic wave measurements are also especially useful for metal enclosures and other non-transparent enclosures that encapsulate potentially hazardous materials. These may be prevalent in processing plants, chemical plants, food industry plants, nuclear power stations, power grid transformers, and refineries. Despite the ability to use acoustic signals for determining material identity and otherwise assessing fluids and materials, such an approach is often complicated by faulty or subpart acoustic signal transmissions these deficiencies create inadequate information that prevents material identification and, in many cases, leads to incorrect identification of material properties or state of the fluids or other materials. In the current era of nanotechnology, a variety of nanotube or other nanoparticles are available which can be formed into nanoscopic fibers or other structures as well as variety of materials leading to wide range of properties and capabilities in the resulting system, for instance: carbon nanotube or nanotubes created from other material or their composites. Advances in nanotechnology have provided acoustic researchers with a number of new materials with nanofibers and nano-pores that can potentially be used in transducer design and as coupling layers. Multiple composite materials were created to explore the capabilities on nanotubes which are waiting for utilization in various industries. The extraordinary thermal and elastic properties of graphene have attracted great attention in its fundamental research and practical applications. Most of the physical properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) derive from graphene.. Carbon nanotube is a cylinder fabricated of rolled up grapheme sheet. Nanotubes can be single-walled carbon (and/or other materials) nanotubes (SWCNTs) and multiwalled carbon (and/or other materials) nanotubes (MWCNTs). Multi-walled nanotubes are multiple concentric nanotubes precisely nested within one another, which can be aligned in one direction and implemented as an array. The MWCNTs are just connected with Van der Waals forces, and no binder material is needed. CNT’s have high anisotropic transport properties. CNT hexagon two-dimensional structure shows high level of crystal quality. MWCNT shows in addition striking telescoping property whereby an inner nanotube core may slide, almost without friction, within its outer nanotube shell, thus creating an atomically perfect linear or rotational motion that shows nearly no friction.