VALIDATION OF CLEANING METHODS FOR UV DISINFECTION SYSTEMS

All waters and wastewaters foul at some rate the quartz sleeves that enclose the lamps used in UV reactors. This necessitates the need for cleaning with several strategies currently being used in the industry. At some point it is necessary for the sleeves to be chemically cleaned in order to maintain acceptable reactor performance. The chemicals used for quartz cleaning are generally acids and are thus corrosive and can be difficult to handle and dispose. An alternative cleaning solution has been formulated that has equal cleaning efficacy but has the characteristics of being non-corrosive, bio-degradable, and non-toxic. It has been certified to ANSI/NSF Standard 60 requirements for use in drinking water treatment applications.To validate the performance of any cleaning mechanism in water and wastewater to evaluate cleaning strategies, a protocol has been suggested. This protocol describes a positive control, criteria to evaluate performance, and long term testing. The test protocol was able to distinguish performance between offline manual, automated mechanical, and automated chemical/mechanical cleaning methods used by the industry. This validation protocol was applied to the chemical/mechanical cleaning system using the alternative formulation to assess its effectiveness. The formulation proved to be very effective.