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Are you working with UV-C LEDs for Disinfection? If so, tell me about it.

rscasny

UV-C lamps are being replaced by UV-C LEDs for disinfection treatment purposes. There are many use cases including consumer, buildings, industrial, medical, among others.

Are you working with UV-C LEDs? If so, can you talk about it? element14 is planning on some activities around it. I'd like to get a sense of the community's experience with it. Thanks. 

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  • I was involved in building the water purification systems for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, which used UV as one aspect in the complex process of making the cleanest water in the world. This was a pretty big water purification plant, which used food grade polyethylene pipes. When the room lights were turned off you could see all the polyethylene pipes glowing blue - acting like light pipes from the UV sources. Since then I've been interested in using UV to make water safe to drink. There are some countries where it is ill advised to drink the water. I thought about re-purposing the UV sources in those old EPROM erasers, but have not yet launched a development, partly because of safety concerns - UV can cause cataracts not to mention skin cancer. I also thought about using it on the common problem of smelly hockey equipment. Unfortunately UV also degrades many synthetics and the last thing you want is for your protective materials to fail to do their job. The advent of UV LEDs opens up some applications, but it takes significant and complex research, for example, to figure out what dosage would be needed to achieve some specific "germ-free" drinking water target. I would suggest anyone wanting to experiment with UV to take precautions not to expose people to UV. If it wasn't for potential human exposure, it might be more useful for insect control. (I believe it is already used for insect control, but I am too leery of it to try it out)

    You could imagine an invisible curtain of UV that would prevent any harmful or contagious biologicals from passing through alive, but care would need to be taken to ensure the light didn't reflect onto a human. It might allow better interaction with immune-compromised individuals or contagious individuals.

  • in reply to dougw

    A UV lamp is a key component of our pond filter and it comes with a lot of warnings.

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