Liquid-gel type suspended matters boundary detection of fluid fertilizer inside PE tank using GPR and seismic crosshole method

Abstract

We applied GPR and seismic crosshole method to finding the liquid-gel type suspended matters boundary of the fluid fertilizer inside PE tank. The fluid fertilizer are produced with died livestock and fishes that have been grinded and put into a PE tank to ferment with some special yeast. Then, high concentration liquid fertilizer settles down to bottom of the PE tank and gel-type organic matters float on top of the PE tank, but it is difficult to measure the exact size of liquid fertilizer from the outside due to opacity of a PE tank. GPR survey with 1GHz antenna was applied to finding boundary of liquid fertilizer and gel-type organic matters along the vertical axis of the outside PE tank. The strength of the direct wave of GPR was changed passing the boundary of two materials due to the change of electric conductivities of two materials, of which result corresponds with the result of Seismic Crosshole method very well. GPR is more productive than Seismic Crosshole method in terms of time cost and easy interpretation.