Experimental and Theoretical Study of a UV Disinfection System for Water Treatment

An innovative energy saving ultraviolet disinfection reactor has been developed and tested. The technical approach taken is to establish a relationship between the power consumption and the design features of a UV disinfection system, and then determine these design features by minimizing the power consumption function. The circular-array type (CAT) UV reactor design consists of four short straight UV bulbs located circumferentially outside a quartz tube. A 4 inches diameter prototype was tested with a water flow rate of 1 1 GPM. Experimental results showed that the CAT UV reactor requires 30% less power consumption (9.6W) compared with a commercial unit (13.8W) to meet the minimum dosage requirement of 400J/m2 for microbial inactivation. The experimental results showed the average dosage for CAT UV reactor is consistent with the analytic results