Dosimetric measurements and Monte Carlo simulation for achieving uniform surface dose in pulsed electron beam irradiation facility

A prototype pulsed electron beam irradiation facility for radiation processing of food and medical products is being commissioned at our centre in Indore, India. Analysis of surface dose and uniformity for a pulsed beam facility is of crucial importance because it is influenced by various operating parameters such as beam current, pulse repetition rate (PRR), scanning current profile and frequency, scanning width and product conveying speed. A large number of experiments are required to determine the harmonized setting of these operating parameters for achieving uniform dose. Since there is no readily available tool to set these parameters, use of Monte Carlo methods and computational tools can prove to be the most viable and time saving technique to support the assessment of the dose distribution. In the present study, Monte Carlo code, MCNP, is used to simulate the transport of 10 MeV electron beam through various mediums coming into the beam path and generate an equivalent dose profile in a polystyrene phantom for stationary state. These results have been verified with experimentally measured dose profile, showing that results are in good agreement within 4%. The Monte Carlo simulation further has been used to optimize the overlapping between the successive pulses of a scan to achieve ±5% dose uniformity along the scanning direction. A mathematical model, which uses the stationary state data, is developed to include the effect of conveyor speed. The algorithm of the model is discussed and the results are compared with the experimentally measured values, which show that the agreement is better than 15%. Finally, harmonized setting for operating parameters of the accelerator are derived to deliver uniform surface dose in the range of 1–13 kGy/pass.