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 D 10) in order to generate data for accurate kinetic studies.