August.15, 2019 – 15:49 — Yining Chen
UV LEDs are recently replacing mercury light as UV light source for disinfection applications. German researchers have developed a UV LED based disinfection system to purify brewing water and clean the caps for bottled beer and soft drinks.
Researchers at the Advanced System Technology (AST) branch of the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB in Ilmenau, Germany, have cooperated in collaboration with PURION, a UV technology solution provider, to create UV LED based purifying module to destroy germs during the process of beverage bottling.
(PURION managing director Mark Wipprich (left) and Fraunhofer researcher Thomas Westerhoff (right) with a UV-C LED module;
image: Fraunhofer IOSB-AST)
Thomas Westerhoff, scientist at Fraunhofer IOSB-AST, and his team designed the UV LED module which delivers a maximum wavelength of 265 nanometers to reach an optimal disinfection performance. Westerhoff indicated that the team had to consider the numbers of LEDs used and how point sources with different wavelengths arranged in the module.
Following numerous practical tests, the researchers are now able to operate the UV LEDs directly in water without the need for a tube to encase them. Thus they elimin… Click here for complete article
