UV REACTOR CONCEPTUALIZATION AND PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION WITH COMPUTATIONAL MODELING

The fluence (dose) delivered by an ultraviolet reactor has traditionally been determined by average UV fluence rate (intensity) multiplied by the mean retention time. True reactor performance however can be much lower as a result of short-circuiting (a phenomenon where microbes receive less than average doses when flowing through the reactor). Since microorganisms that receive low doses determine the overall reactor efficiency, a dose distribution instead of an average dose is necessary to accurately predict reactor performance. Detailed flow conditions to estimate paths of microorganisms and intensity field calculations are therefore required to predict doses received by each individual microorganism.The validation of an UV computational disinfection model (CoDiM) is presented. Performances of different vertical and parallel UV reactors have been estimated with the model and compared with results from experiments. The presented computational disinfection model provides researchers with a practical tool to evaluate UV reactor performances and conceptualize new and more efficient reactors.