As you read the information about our UV-lights you may notice that the recommended flows posted on our UV-lights are significantly lower than our competitors recommended flows. There is a very good reason for this. We wanted to produce a quality product and a product that produced reliably high quality results. Our recommended flows will produce a UV dose of at least 40,000 uWsec/cm2 which is well above the posted 22,000 uWsec/cm2 needed to kill most algae. Some of our competitors flow rates and vessel diameters are completely out of the realm of reality for delivering a significantly high dose of UV light. UV dose is a product of intensity multiplied by contact time. Intensity is the amount of UV energy per unit area measured in microwatts per square centimeter. The contact time is the amount of time the solution is exposed to UV in the reactor (measured in seconds). Therefore, UV dose is expressed in microwatt seconds per square centimeter (uWsec/cm2).

UV DOSE = Intensity (uW) x Contact Time (s) / cm2

Intensity of the UV light is affected by several thing such as suspended solids, coatings on the quartz sleeve and absorption of the light by the media it is passing through. The absorption of UV light is described by the Bouguer-Lambert-Beer law. When a parallel beam of monochromatic radiation (eg.254nm) passes through a non-diffusing absorbing medium (eg. Water), a constant fraction of the radiation is absorbed in each unit distance of the medium traversed. The irradiance in the medium falls off with increasing thickness according to a exponential fashion. This means for example, that if one centimeter of a material absorbs 50% of the radiation, then the next centimeter will absorb 50% of the remaining radiation, and so forth. So that at the end of on centimeter, the initial energy will be down 50%, after two centimeters to 25%, and after three centimeters down to 12.5% etc. Theoretically the radiation would never be totally absorbed. This has significance when considering the vessel diameter that the water is being passed through and the intensity it is exposed to. Past ONE INCH from the UV light bulb most of the UV radiation has been absorbed by the water in the vessel and the UV dose is too small to kill bacteria or algae. The above is real science and is reproducible.

Now compare this to some of the UV lights on the market that have vessels that are up to 8-12 inches in diameter with only a single bulb down the middle and recommend flows at 100gpm. Not only is the outer 7-11 inches of the water not being exposed to significant levels of UV radiation, but the water is passing through so fast that even if it was exposed to appropriate intensities of UV light it would be passing through too fast for exposure time. Also out there, is a UV light, with a reported super high intensity bulb that is only a few inches long in small vessel, but with recommended flows that leave the water exposed for minute fractions of a second.

It's like running with a vacuum and thinking that your picking up more dirt. If you slow down you'll pick up more dirt and if one slows the flows down through a UV light they will kill more microorganisms. Fluidart Technologies UV-lights use industry standard vessel diameter and flow rate recommendations to produce maximum results from our product. In these days of multiple antibiotic resistant Aeromonas bacteria and Herpes virus out breaks it just makes sense to use the UV light to it's maximum potential and produce as organism free water as possible, not just algae free water.