Quantifying ultraviolet inactivation kinetics in nearly opaque fluids

Abstract

The use of ultraviolet light for inactivation of pathogens is an engrained, low-cost, eco-friendly method for disinfection of nearly transparent (UVT254 > 30%/cm) contaminated fluids for which a standard-collimated beam apparatus is typically used for measurement of intrinsic inactivation kinetics. However, such a device cannot be used for low ultraviolet transmittance (UVT254 < 30%/cm) and nearly opaque (UVT254 < 10%/cm) fluids because of the lack of sufficient mixing and intrinsic inactivation kinetics controlled by dose distribution and mass-transfer effects. In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was used to determine the validity regime for accurate ultraviolet inactivation kinetics studies in low transmittance and nearly opaque fluids when a new Taylor–Couette collimated beam apparatus, which exploits flow instability through the formation of toroidal counter-rotating vortices, is used for irradiations. A Taylor number of ∼ 46,500 was sufficient to overcome the very short UV light penetration at UVT254 ∼ 0.001%/cm as long as the log10 reduction value was used as controlling parameter. Specifically, it was identified that, in case of first-order inactivation kinetics, the applied average dose (AD) should not be higher than three times the dose required for one log10 inactivation (also known as D10) in order to generate data for accurate kinetic studies.