Radiation processing is not new. It has been used commercially for almost forty years. Materials which use irradiation as part o
The electron accelerator is essential equipment for Radiation processing industry. The average beam power directly affects the efficiency and output in all industrial applications, such as medical sterilization, food preservation, purifying drinking water and removing noxious substances.
Linear Electron Accelerator (often called Linac) is a type of electron accelerator. In a Linac, the electrons were propelled in a straight line by using an electromagnetic field in a traveling-wave accelerator. The acceleration chamber is an evacuated cylindrical pipe that serves as a waveguide for the accelerating field. Linear high-energy accelerators use a linear array of plates (or drift tubes) to which an alternating high-energy field is applied. As the electrons approach a plate they are accelerated towards it by an opposite polarity charge applied to the plate. As they pass through a hole in the plate, the polarity is switched so that the plate now repels them and they are now accelerated by it towards the next plate.
Because sources of radio-frequency power of this magnitude must be operated intermittently (they will not survive continuous service), the beams from these accelerators are delivered in short bursts. During the first part of the acceleration, the electrons are caused to gather into bunches. Normally a stream of "bunches" of electrons is accelerated, so a carefully controlled AC voltage is applied to each plate to continuously repeat this process for each bunch.
As the electrons approach the speed of light the switching rate of the electric fields becomes so high that they operate at microwave frequencies, and so RF cavity resonators are used in higher energy machines instead of simple plates. The microwaves are produced by large klystrons (high-frequency vacuum-tube amplifiers) with power outputs of 20–30 megawatts.
In the intense field the electrons gain about 2 MeV every 30 centimetres or so. Subsequently, the electrons move with the crest of the electromagnetic wave. Pulses of electrons can be injected at energies of several megaelectron volts to a few gigaelecton volts (that is, speeds about half that of light). However, according to the Codex General Standard, the maximum power of industrial Electron accelerators is 10MeV.
The reliability, flexibility and accuracy of the electron accelerators have largely supplanted the older use of Cobalt-60.
10Mev Electro linear accelerator
