NSF Award
9760405
*** 9760405 Schaefer This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project addresses the need for cost effective water treatment systems. Ultraviolet (UV) water treatment is attractive because contaminants are destroyed, unlike filtration techniques that produce toxic byproducts. The use of UV water treatment systems is limited by electricity cost for lamp power. This project uses a new UV lamp with three times higher efficiency than the industry standard. Furthermore, initial research indicates that the shorter wavelength UV spectrum of the new lamp both increases oxidation rates and reduces the amount of oxidant for many organic molecules. The project objectives are to engineer a new lamp with practical lifetime and use it to research the water treatment process using the new lamp's short wavelength spectrum while minimizing the quantity of oxidant. The project team includes a lamp manufacturer to support lamp engineering and a UV water treatment company to support controlled organic destruction testing. The results will serve to establish the feasibility of a water treatment process based on the new lamp, and are intended to lead in Phase II to refinement of the lamp and water treatment process, a prototype, field demonstrations and commercialization in Phase III. A successful project will result in the commercialization of UV lamps and a new UV based water treatment process that will supersede existing commercial UV groundwater systems. A new system would be cost effective for cleaning up pink, gray, bilge and other high concentration organic water contamination problems. For groundwater applications where commercial UV systems already exist, water treatment costs will decrease by large increments. Furthermore, the new system has potential as a replacement for chlorination. ***
