Applied Radiation and Isotopes 186 (2022) 110267

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Applied Radiation and Isotopes

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apradiso

Use of gamma radiation and artificial neural network techniques to monitor

characteristics of polyduct transport of petroleum by-products
W.L. Salgado a, b, *, R.S.F. Dam a, b, E.J.A. Puertas a, C.M. Salgado b, A.X. Silva a
a
Programa de Engenharia Nuclear – (PEN/COPPE), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro – (UFRJ), Avenida Horácio de Macedo 2030, G – 206, 21941-914 Cidade
Universitária, RJ, Brazil
b
Instituto de Engenharia Nuclear – (DIRAD/IEN), Rua Hélio de Almeida 75, 21941-906 Cidade Universitária, RJ, Brazil

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This study presents a methodology based on the dual-mode gamma densitometry technique in combination with
Gamma densitometry artificial neural networks to simultaneously determine type and quantity of four different fluids (Gasoline,
MCNP6 code Glycerol, Kerosene and Fuel Oil) to assist operators of a fluid transport system in pipelines commonly found in
Artificial neural network
the petrochemical industry, as it is necessary to continuously monitor information about the fluids being
Polyduct
Petroleum by-products
transferred. The detection system is composed of a 661.657 keV (137Cs) gamma-ray emitting source and two NaI
(Tl) scintillation detectors to record transmitted and scattered photons. The information recorded in both de­
tectors was directly applied as input data for the artificial neural networks. The proposed intelligent system
consists of three artificial neural networks capable of predicting the fluid volume percentages (purity level) with
94.6% of all data with errors less than 5% and MRE of 1.12%, as well as identifying the pair of fluids moving in
the pipeline with 95.9% accuracy.

1. Introduction
Petroleum is an essential raw material for various industrial activ­
ities and its derivatives are used daily by humans in a wide variety of
applications, such as fuel, liquefied petroleum gas, plastics, asphalt
products and solvents. The high demand for these products has made the
process of extraction, refining and distribution key activities for a
country’s economy. The transportation of oil products plays a very
important role in reducing the logistical costs of oil companies. To make
the connection between refineries (origin) and distribution centers
(destination) more efficient, pipeline transport is used, which consists of
pipes connected to form a transport line called a poly-pipeline. Although
poly-pipelines have a high implementation cost compared to other
modes, the operating costs are lower and they have a high level of
reliability.
Another great advantage of this system is that the same poly-pipeline
is capable of transporting several products (fluids), such as: gasoline,
diesel and kerosene. However, this transport is carried out in batches of
one product at a time, in sequence, so it is obvious that during the
operation of the poly-pipeline it is necessary to decide which products
are to be transported at which time, i.e., how the products are
sequenced, in order to optimize the transport process. It is important for
the operators of this system to continuously monitor the characteristics
of the transferred fluids, such as their type, density and quantity.
Consecutive transport of fluids in poly-pipeline of two different products
without any physical separation (pigs) between them causes mixing
(contamination) of these fluids forming a third product with original
specification (Sasikumar et al., 1997; Salgado et al., 2020). The entire
volume formed by this mixture is called the interface region. In this case,
the volume of the interface region (contaminated fluids) must go to a
suitable tank so that it can be reprocessed or sold at a lower added value,
all of which leads to increased production costs (Milidiú et al., 2003).
This situation highlights the need to develop techniques applied to
poly-pipeline transport to accurately identify the interface region and
thus reduce the volume of fluid discarded to minimize damage. Many
papers already published prove that techniques based on gamma-ray
attenuation/scattering can be used in non-destructive measurements
to obtain different properties of fluid, making it a potentially reliable
and applicable technique in the oil and petrochemical industries (Dam
et al., 2019; Abdul-Majid, 2013; Hanus et al., 2014; Mosorov 2019;

* Corresponding author. Programa de Engenharia Nuclear – (PEN/COPPE), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro – (UFRJ), Avenida Horácio de Macedo 2030, G
– 206, 21941-914 Cidade Universitária, RJ, Brazil.
E-mail addresses: william.otero@coppe.ufrj.br (W.L. Salgado), rdam@coppe.ufrj.br (R.S.F. Dam), eddieavilan@gmail.com (E.J.A. Puertas), otero@ien.gov.br
(C.M. Salgado), ademir@con.ufrj.br (A.X. Silva).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apradiso.2022.110267
Received 23 February 2022; Received in revised form 8 April 2022; Accepted 28 April 2022
Available online 4 May 2022
0969-8043/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
W.L. Salgado et al.
Fig. 1. Simulation detection system setup.
Karami et al., 2020). Regarding the use of gamma radiation-based
techniques for the monitoring of petroleum products, some research
has been carried out in recent years. Monitoring applications of petro­
leum products and derivatives (Salgado et al., 2016, 2020; Khorsandi
et al., 2013), in flow measurements (Salgado et al., 2009, 2010), in
volume fraction calculations (Nazemi et al., 2016; Hanus et al., 2018;
Salgado et al., 2021a; Affonso et al., 2020), in product density prediction
(AlQuraishi and Shokir, 2011; Roshani et al., 2018) and in interface
region identification in pipeline transport (AlQuraishi and Shokir, 2011;
Roshani et al., 2018; Salgado et al., 2021b, 2021c).
In view of this, this study proposes the development of an intelligent
system capable of identifying the fluids that form the interface region
and their quantities (purity level). The proposed methodology is based
on a dual-mode gamma-ray densitometry technique (transmission and
attenuation). The mathematical code, Monte Carlo N-Particle 6
(MCNP6) (Goorley et al., 2016) that simulates radiation transport was
used to develop a measurement geometry consisting of a137Cs
gamma-ray source and two NaI(Tl) scintillation detectors to measure the
transmitted and scattered spectra. To produce the dataset for training
and validation of the network, the MCNP6 code was also used. Three
artificial neural networks (ANNs) were designed to predict the type and
amount of transported fluid.
2. Methodology
2.1. Monte Carlo simulation
In this study, the MCNP6 code has two functions, the first was to
develop a suitable measurement geometry based on the principles of
gamma-ray attenuation and scattering. The second function of the code
was to implement simulations to produce a database based on the re­
cords obtained by the scintillation detectors of the interaction of the
2
Applied Radiation and Isotopes 186 (2022) 110267
Table 1
Data on fluids investigated in this study.
Fluid Element Mass Fraction Density Formula
Gasoline H 0.157000 0.721 C8H18
C 0.843000
Kerosene H 0.160000 0.819 C14H30
C 0.840000
Fuel Oil H 0.125878 0.955 –
C 0.862308
S 0.011814
Glycerine H 0.087554 1.2613 C3H8O3
C 0.391262
O 0.521185
Fig. 2. Simulated density of each mixture (transmix) for four fluids.
radiation with the tube-fluid system, considering that they are necessary
to train and evaluate the artificial neural network.
The proposed mathematical model, simulated in the MCNP6 code,
represents a geometry using two measurement modes, which is based on
the transmitted and scattered beams that can be calculated using the
Beer-Lambert law and Klein Nishina cross sections (Klein and Nishina,
1929) respectively. This geometry consists of a137Cs source with
661.657 keV gamma-ray emission and two 1¼ x ¾" NaI(Tl) scintillation
detectors. The photons emitted by the 137Cs radioisotope interact with
the tube-fluid system through two different main mechanisms of radi­
ation interaction with matter, the photoelectric effect and Compton
scattering. The measurement setup is presented in Fig. 1. It is important
to mention that the simulated detection system proposed in this study
was validated with an experimental setup for the transmitted beam
proposed in a previous work (Salgado et al., 2020).
As shown in Fig. 1, the first detector (D1) was placed diametrically
opposite the 137Cs source at 1 cm from the tube to measure the trans­
mitted beam, while the second detector (D2) was placed at a distance of
1 cm from the tube at 15◦ to the source to measure the scattered one.
This measurement geometry allowed better convergence on training the
neural networks, improving the accuracy of the results (Salgado et al.,
2021a). Using the tally F8 command available in the MCNP6 code, the
pulse height distribution (PHD) in both detectors was obtained to
compose the dataset for training and evaluation of the networks. The
Gaussian Energy Broadening (GEB) option was provided to the input file
of the MCNP6 code using the command “FT8 GEB” to consider the en­
ergy resolution of the real detectors.
To reduce the computational time of the simulations, the 137Cs
source was mathematically collimated in a conical configuration using
W.L. Salgado et al.
Fig. 3. Fluid purity level prediction network.
the SI, SP and SB commands available in the MCNP6 code. In all simu­
lations, a collimation with an angular aperture of 8.7◦ was used, which is
sufficient to provide good counting statistics in the NaI(Tl) detectors.
In the simulations, a 316L steel pipe with an inside diameter of 40.64
cm, a wall thickness of 0.03 cm and a density of 8.0 g cm− 3 was defined.
The proposed model was tested with four different types of petroleum
by-products: Gasoline (Gas), Kerosene (Ker), Fuel Oil (Oil) and Glycerine
(Gly) and their main characteristics are presented in Table 1 (McConn
et al., 2011).
As the study also aims to identify the interface region in pipeline
transport, six fluid groups were formed for the investigation: Gas-Ker,
Gas-Oil, Gas-Gly, Ker-Gly, Ker-Oil, Oil-Gly. Fig. 2 illustrates the trans­
port curve of four Ker-Oil-Gly-Gas batches.
In fact, the interface region represents a combination between two
fluids that are in contact with each other. In this region, the amount of
the fluid being transported at the current moment (e.g., Gas) gradually
increases relative to the fluid transported previously (in this example,
Gly). To model this interface region, the six possible combinations of
two fluids mentioned above were considered using the stratified flow
regime. The interface region was modelled by varying the fluid fractions
from 0 to 100%, in the range from 0% to 10% and from 90% to 100%
with 1% steps and in the intermediate range from 10% to 90% with 10%
steps. In this way, 222 simulations (6 interface regions × 37 combina­
tions of fluid quantities) were performed, but always considering two-in-
two fluid transport.
Fig. 4. Fluid classification network in the interface region.
3
Applied Radiation and Isotopes 186 (2022) 110267
2.2. Artificial neural network (ANN)
An artificial neural network (ANN) is a computational model capable
of recognizing patterns through a group of interconnected units (neu­
rons) where each connection has a weight. The weights are associated
with the input signals, and when adjusted, the network can correctly
adapt to a certain function and produce an expected (target) output
signal. This allows predictive models to be built from a database. This
requires a network structure consisting of an input layer, one or more
intermediate (hidden) layers and an output layer, all fully connected to
each other. The training of the network, using the supervised learning
algorithm Backpropagation, consists of presenting data to the input
layer of the network. The resulting signal is propagated through the
network layers until it produces a response in the output layer (predic­
tion). The value obtained is compared with the expected value and its
error is calculated. This error is then back-propagated from the output
layer to the input layer, and the connection weights of the inner/inter­
mediate layer units are adjusted to progressively reduce this error. In
other words, it is an algorithm based on adjusting the weights of the
units of a network from the error rate obtained in the previous iteration
(epoch). A proper adjustment of the weights reduces the error rates and
makes the model reliable, increasing its generalizability. At the end of
this process, the model is ready to make predictions for unknown input
data. In general, the training of neural networks or learning models
occurs according to the following phases:
W.L. Salgado et al.
Fig. 5. Espectros para 100% de Gasolina obtidos pelos detectores: a) D1; b) D2.
i. Initialization – Initial weights are applied to all neurons.
ii. Forward propagation – inputs from a dataset are propagated
through the neural network and an output is calculated.
iii. Error function – An error function is defined, compared with the
expected output value, i.e., how far the model is from the ex­
pected result.
iv. Backpropagation – The algorithm changes the gradient values of
the neuron weights to reduce the error function to a minimum.
v. Update of weights - Weights are changed to the optimal values
according to the results of the algorithm.
This study aims to determine the purity levels and identify the fluids
that form a certain interface region that is formed during transport in
poly-pipeline. To achieve these steps, two neural networks were devel­
oped, the first one (ANN 1) called predictive network of the purity levels
of the fluids and the second one (ANN 2) classifier, where the objective is
to classify the pair of fluids that form a certain interface region. All the
networks used are 3-layer feed-forward Multilayer Perceptron (Haykin,
1994) trained with the supervised learning algorithm Backpropagation.
The architecture of the prediction network (ANN 1) proposed to
determine the purity level of each of the four petroleum by-products
investigated in this study is illustrated in Fig. 3. The inputs of the
network are the PHD1 (20–720 keV) and PHD2 (20–360 keV) recorded
at detectors D1 and D2 respectively, thus forming 106 neurons. While
the outputs represent the amount of each of the fluids (Gas, Gly, Oil and
Ker) present in this investigation, then 4 output neurons are required.
The development of the classifier network (ANN 2) attempted to
automatically identify the fluids present in the interface region and
consisted of using also the PHDs recorded in both detectors as input data
for the network, while the outputs represent the pair of fluids in trans­
port and are given by the combination of the fluids: Gas-Gly, Gas-Ker,
Gas-Oil, Ker-Gly, Ker-Oil and Oil-Gas forming 6 neurons, as shown in
Fig. 4. A binary configuration is proposed to obtain the identification of
the fluids in the interface region of the transport system. The network is
designed to set the highest value among the network outputs to “1” for
each fluid pair and “0” for the others. As an example, suppose the fluids
are Gas-Ker, then the network should set the output to Gas-Gly = 0, Gas-
Ker = 1, Gas-Oil = 0, Ker-Gly = 0, Ker-Oil = 0 and Oil-Gas = 0.
In Monte Carlo simulations 222 different data were modelled. To
control the generalizability of the network, avoiding overtraining, we
Table 2
Predictive performance of the proposed ANN 1.
Output Percent (%) Quantity (%)
Gas Gly Ker Oil
5 83.33 92.59 78.70 81.48
5 to 10 7.41 0.93 6.48 5.56
10 to 20 5.56 3.70 4.63 9.26
20 to 30 0.92 1.85 5.56 1.85
over 30 2.78 0.93 4.63 1.85
4
Applied Radiation and Isotopes 186 (2022) 110267
used the Cross Validation method (Haykin, 1994; Zhang and Rong,
1996) which divides the database into three subsets, where the first
subset called Training (TRT) is used to train the network, in this phase
the synaptic weights are updated; the second one, called Test (TST), is
used to test the training of the network; in this phase the generalizability
of the network is evaluated; the third subset is used for the final vali­
dation of the training of the network, and is used with the already
trained network. In both networks (ANN 1 and ANN 2), 156 data were
implemented for training, 44 data for testing and 22 data for validating
the efficiency of the network. To find the optimal architecture of the
neural networks, different architectures based on the backpropagation
algorithm were used, in addition to the number of neurons in the in­
termediate layers and the activation functions.
The mean relative error (MRE) and root mean square error (RMSE)
are good parameters to evaluate the performance of the networks by
comparing the actual data (MCNP6) with the data predicted by the
networks. The RMSE is a measure of the measurement uncertainty
compared to the actual value for a given data set and is calculated using
Equation 1.
1 ∑
N
(xactual − xANN )
MRE = (1)
N 1 xactual
The RMSE is a measure often used to measure the differences be­
tween the values predicted by the network and the actual values and can
be calculated using Equation 2. The RMSE shows how far the data are
from the regression line.
√̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅̅
√ N
√∑ (xactual − xANN )2
RMSE = √ (2)
N
1
Where:
N – number of data;
xactual – actual value given by MCNP6 code;
xANN – forecasted value by the ANN.
3. Results and discussions
Fig. 5 shows a graphical representation of the PHDs obtained in both
detectors considering the tube containing only Gasoline (Gas), as an
example. The energy resolution fitting coefficients for the NaI(Tl) de­
tector used in the GEB command of the MCNP6 code, a = − 0.0071 MeV,
b = 0.0904 MeV1/2 and c = − 0.1768 MeV− 1, were fitted in previous
work (Salgado et al., 2022). The same energy resolution was considered
for both detectors. The gamma-ray energy range was varied from 20 to
720 keV in 10 keV steps for PHD1 (detector D1) and from 20 to 360 keV
in 10 keV steps for PHD2 (detector D2). A number per stories (NPS) of 2
× 108 was determined to obtain the relative error below 1% for all en­
ergy ranges for both PHDs.
With the data set for training and evaluation of the network, different
W.L. Salgado et al. Applied Radiation and Isotopes 186 (2022) 110267

Table 3
Mathematical metrics for evaluating the ANN 1 prediction.
SET METRICS Gas Gly Ker Oil

All MRE (%) 1.88 0.95 2.65 1.39

RMSE 0.523 0.258 0.906 0.748
R2 0.9998 0.9999 0.9994 0.9996
TRT MRE (%) 1.68 0.28 1.95 1.54
RMSE 0.361 0.119 0.782 0.389
TST MRE (%) 1.26 3.41 2.77 1.70
RMSE 0.844 0.440 1.063 1.135
VAL MRE (%) 4.54 0.74 7.35 3.94
RMSE 0.640 0.429 1.300 1.412

Fig. 7. Prediction accuracy for each fluid pair.

layer, the activation function was “Gaussian Complementary”. The input

layer has 106 neurons, the “Linear” normalization function is used and
the output with 4 neurons is the “Logistic” function. Table 2 shows the
performance of ANN 1 in relation to the relative error ranges. It can be
seen that the vast majority of the data had errors up to 5%.
The regression plot of the actual data defined in the simulations
(MCNP6) and the data estimated using the proposed model (ANN 1)
provided the results described in Table 3. The performance of the
developed network model was calculated using Equations 1 and 2.
This result shows a good convergence in the prediction of ANN 1,
however, there are high errors in some data, but this is because the
Fig. 6. Relative errors obtained by ANN 1 prediction for all data. metric (MRE) used, strongly penalizes low values, mainly in the range of
1–4% of the fluid purity. Fig. 6 shows the relative error between actual
and predicted values for all data.
Table 4
In fact, the influence of MRE (%) for low flow purity values can be
Prediction data for the validation subset.
seen in data 1 and 14 in Table 4, which have MRE of 86% and 36%,
Standard Percentage of fluids (%) respectively. Table 4 shows the comparison between the actual data and
MCNP6 Network the data predicted by the network in the Validation subset is presented.
Gas Gly Ker Oil Gas Gly Ker Oil
It is worth remembering that at this stage the network has already been
trained and therefore no longer needs the training data, i.e., it is tested
1 99 0 1 0 98.53 0.00 1.86 0.00
with data not used in the training phase.
2 60 0 40 0 58.98 0.02 42.02 0.00
3 9 0 91 0 8.49 0.23 91.38 0.00 The best structure of the classifier neural network (ANN 2) has an
4 1 0 99 0 1.70 0.00 98.70 0.00 intermediate layer with three modules, the first and second modules
5 70 0 0 30 68.84 0.30 0.52 29.53 have 58 neurons, with “Gaussian” and “Tanh” activation function,
6 15 0 0 85 16.17 0.00 0.00 85.22
respectively, while the third hidden layer module has 52 neurons and
7 7 0 0 93 6.81 0.27 0.00 93.13
8 3 0 0 97 2.96 0.10 0.00 96.88 used the “Complementary Gaussian” activation function. The input layer
9 1 0 0 99 0.91 0.13 0.29 98.62 has 121 neurons, the “Linear” normalization function is used and the
10 0 0 0 100 0.86 1.37 0.57 94.42 output with 6 neurons is the “Logistic” function. This structure provided
11 0 5 95 0 0.26 4.42 94.83 0.00 an average ANN 2 prediction accuracy for the 6 fluid pairs of 95.9%. In
12 0 75 25 0 0.64 75.31 23.56 0.72
general, all fluid combinations seem to be easily identified, with the Gas-
13 0 80 20 0 1.38 80.00 16.77 1.24
14 0 96 4 0 0.87 96.01 2.56 0.63 Ker combination standing out positively, where the network was correct
15 0 0 91 9 0.00 0.33 93.52 6.94 in all data, as can be seen in Fig. 7.
16 0 0 85 15 0.00 0.33 86.34 13.75 The performance of the network was assessed by the accuracy of
17 0 0 70 30 0.00 0.85 69.56 29.77
identification (ACC), which is defined by Equation (3). Where: TP - the
18 0 0 30 70 0.00 0.00 32.04 69.70
19 0 9 0 91 0.25 8.86 0.00 91.84
number of true positive identifications and FN - for false negative
20 0 30 0 70 0.56 30.68 0.00 68.96 identifications.
21 0 85 0 15 0.00 85.30 1.84 13.75
22 0 98 0 2 0.00 98.03 0.98 1.29
TP
ACC = (3)
TP + FN
It should be noted that the output value of ANN 2 is a 6-dimensional
neural network structures were tested, with different numbers of neu­ →
rons in each layer and different activation functions. The best structure vector P (P1 , P2 , P3 , P4 , P5 , P6 ) (see as n-tuple of numbers). Each element
for ANN 1 has an intermediate layer with three modules, all with 31 of the vector is a real number, varying between 0 and 1, indicating the
neurons; in the first module the activation function “Gaussian” was used, possibility of the existence of each pair of fluids present in the interface
in the second module “Tanh”, and in the third module of the hidden region. The results of the qualitative prediction (prediction of the exis­
tence of fluids) are obtained by finding the index of the maximum value

5
W.L. Salgado et al. Applied Radiation and Isotopes 186 (2022) 110267

Table 5 which is related to the purity level of the denser fluid.

Confusion matrix for each pair of fluid. The learning ANN 3 parameters were obtained empirically by
Fluids Prediction observing the highest value of the correlation coefficient, the RMSE and
the highest percentage of correct answers in a range of errors of up to 5%
Gas- Glas- Gas- Ker- Ker- Oil-
Gly Ker Oil Gly Oil Gly in the ANN response. Such parameters that presented the best answer of
network are shown in Table 6.
Actual Gas–Gly 33 1 0 2 0 0
Gas–Ker 0 37 0 0 0 0
The regression plot of the actual data defined in the simulations and
Gas–Oil 0 1 35 0 1 0 the data predicted using the proposed ANN 3 MLP model provided the
Ker–Gly 0 0 0 36 0 1 results described in Table 7. It should be noted that relative errors of less
Ker–Oil 0 0 0 1 36 0 than 5% were obtained for more than 94% of the data investigated.
Oil–Gly 0 0 0 1 0 36
The error metrics MRE and RMSE were also used to evaluate the
performance of the developed model and their results are shown in
Table 8. The regression coefficient for all data showed a maximum
value.
All results show that the network adequately fitted the provided
function and was able to predict the fluid percentages with a very high
accuracy, i.e. the prediction showed results with good agreement in
relation to the pre-set values. Furthermore, this procedure improved the
results from 78.70% (worst case) to 94.60% when using the ANN 3
network, which represents an improvement of 16.81%.

4. Conclusions

In petrochemical industries it is common to transport several liquids

with different densities in a common line. There is a clear need for the
operator of a pipeline transport system to have information on the
contents of the transport lines. Therefore, the proposed methodology
aims to help control the fluids line by determining the type and quantity
of the fluids in motion. This proposed intelligent monitoring system was
Fig. 8. Predictive network developed to increase the accuracy of fluid purity developed using dual-modality densitometry techniques and artificial
level calculations. intelligence by mean of artificial neural networks. The neural networks
were able to measure with good accuracy the percentages of the inves­
tigated fluids (petroleum by-products). The maximum MRE and RMSE
Table 6
for all outputs were equal to 2.65% and 0.906, respectively, for ANN 1.
ANN 3 training parameters.
The average accuracy in identifying fluid pairs for ANN 2 was above
PARAMETERS Input Intermediate Layer Output 95.9%. From these results, artificial neural networks can be applied in
Activation Linear Gaussian Tanh15 Gaussian Logistic situations of identification and prediction of purity levels of fluids in
Function Comp. poly-pipeline transport. ANN 3 showed extraordinary potential, with an
Neurons 68 14 13 13 1
average accuracy of 94.6% in identifying purity levels. This was an
improvement in results of 16.81% over the methodology using ANN 1
and ANN 2, demonstrating that the fluid identification procedure for
Table 7 subsequent purity level prediction was the best option, considered that
Classification of relative errors obtained by ANN 3. the classifier network has an accuracy of 100%. The development of
Output Percent (%) Quantity (%) deep learning networks is being studied to improve the generalization
under 5 94.60 capacity of the classifier network (ANN 2).
5 to 10 2.25
10 to 20 0 CRediT authorship contribution statement
20 to 30 0
over 30 0.45
W.L. Salgado: Writing – original draft, Validation, Software, Meth­
odology, Data curation. R.S.F. Dam: Writing – review & editing, Vali­
of this vector. Table 5 illustrates a confusion matrix of the 37 combi­ dation, Software. E.J.A. Puertas: Writing – review & editing, Formal
nations of quantities for each fluid pair. analysis. C.M. Salgado: Resources, Project administration, Conceptu­
From here, with the aim of increasing the accuracy in the prediction alization. A.X. Silva: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Formal
of the purity level of the fluid, a third neural network (ANN 3) was analysis.
designed. A representative schematic of this network is shown in Fig. 8.
To do this, it was necessary to test a hypothesis, considering that the Declaration of competing interest
accuracy of ANN 2 network was 100%, a connection was made between
ANN 2 and ANN 3, where the response of ANN 2 was inserted as input The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
data for ANN 3. It is important to note that ANN 3 has only one output, interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence

Table 8
Mathematical metrics for the assessment of ANN network prediction 3.
Network Output MRE (%) RMSE

Subset TRT TST VAL ALL TRT TST VAL ALL

Quantity of fluid 0.51 1.64 4.41 1.12 0.133 0.304 0.332 0.204

6
W.L. Salgado et al.
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge scholarships from Comissão
Nacional de Energia Nuclear (CNEN). Thanks also to Instituto de
Engenharia Nuclear (IEN) and Programa de Engenharia Nuclear –
Instituto Alberto Luiz Coimbra de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa de Engen­
haria (PEN/COPPE), da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
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