Design and thermal-hydraulic analysis of multi-target system with 100 MeV proton linear accelerator for the production of 67 Cu and 68 Ge radioisotopes

• Published in: Applied radiation and isotopes 2024-09, Vol.211, p.111415
• Main Authors: Jung, Juwon, Kim, Kibaek, Kim, Chorong, Jung, Myung-Hwan, Kim, Yoon, Jang, Se-Hwan, Ko, Dong-Woo, Jang, Hye Min, Cho, Won-Je, Kim, Young-Joo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1872-9800
• DOI: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2024.111415

Radioisotopes are widely used in the fields of medicine, science, and industry. The growing demand for medical radioisotopes has driven research on alternative production methods. In particular, both isotopes of Cu and Ge play vital roles in the medical environment in many countries to be used in the radio-immunotherapy and the positron emission tomography imaging, respectively. This study designed a multi-target system consisting of two Zn and one Ga O plates to enable simultaneous production of the medical radioisotopes Cu and Ge using 100 MeV proton beams. To understand the thermal effect on the multi-targets, we examined the distribution of energy absorbed in each solid plate target when exposed to an accelerated proton beam through the thermal-fluid analysis based on ANSYS simulation. For confirming thermal stability for two Zn targets and one Ga O target, the modified water flow path inside the multi-target system was designed effectively with the controlled distribution of multiple sub-holes between main inlet and the following four channels. It was confirmed that the newly designed multi-target system of Zn and Ga O solid plates shows higher thermal stability than the case of uniform distribution of water inlet, which means it could be exposed to a higher current beam of 7.57% to decrease the processing time.