摘要 |
A liquid scintillation counter system utilizes multiplexing to monitor scintillation events in a continuously flowing effluent, using relatively few sensors, such as photomultiplier tubes, each such photomultiplier tube, in a specific embodiment, receiving light generated by scintillation events at a plurality of predetermined monitoring points along the flow path of the effluent. Each monitoring point, is coupled by means of light guides to at least two of the photomultiplier tubes. Some background noise is eliminated by use of discriminators which establish a predetermined threshold level for the magnitude of the outputs of the photomultiplier tube, above which the pulses are countable. Coincident circuitry is used to determine the presence of a scintillation event, and thereby issue a coincidence pulse which is counted. In accordance with the invention, n photomultiplier tubes can be used to monitor (n/2)(n-1) monitoring points along the flow path.
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