Comment by lbotos
25 days ago
Feels like v2 of this will be “ducted” in that it lives next to your air handler and comes on when you are circulating air.
(Like a reef tank sterilizer)
25 days ago
Feels like v2 of this will be “ducted” in that it lives next to your air handler and comes on when you are circulating air.
(Like a reef tank sterilizer)
The advantage of far UVC over other UV air cleaning solutions is that it doesn't need to be ducted. This means that you can kill microbes right when they leave someone's mouth - you don't need to wait for them to be sucked through an air handler.
I'm curious if plastics embrittlement is a problem with Far-UVC. I recently was putting a large evaporative humidifier [1] through its paces for someone to get my opinion, and a challenge was that you had to clean the water tank that was the foundation of the unit fairly frequently (every few days). I provided feedback to the manufacturer that a far UVC bulb in the tank might be useful for reducing cleaning intervals.
For use cases where the emissions are contained (HVAC, water tanks, etc), I think it's a slam dunk from an electronic antiseptic perspective. UV is somewhat common in water filtration today, but perhaps an improvement is possible if these bulbs last longer than existing UV solutions.
[1] https://levoit.com/collections/humidifiers-diffusers/product...
(I do not recommend the humidifier by the way, simply too much work to keep the water tank and the evaporation panels clean, I recommend an ultrasonic version instead)
I do not believe that there is a good understanding of the impact of far-uvc on plastic embrittlement.
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Along the same lines… where is the proof that as the unit ages it doesn’t leave the magic 220nm range?
It is complete nonsense to point this at people.
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It doesn't have to be, but you can avoid any concerns about looking into it or affecting the light quality in the room by doing so.
If you were going to duct it then why wouldn't you just use regular UVC? Much cheaper.
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A ducted system seems like it kills a lot of the pros of this system compared to just putting an (effective, i.e. merv-13+) air filter in the ducted system to catch the viruses. And also other things that are bad for you like particles small enough to get where they shouldn't in your lungs.
Nah--use 254nm for that. It's a standard thing, if it's contained in a duct it doesn't need to be fancypants human-safe 222nm.
Ducting it kills most of the effectiveness though--now you have to move air through your ducts in order to treat it, so you only get as much treatment as you move air--usually not very fast or else it would be loud and annoying. You can move it faster, but then you need more UV since the faster-moving air won't be exposed for as long. Honestly, upgrade to a MERV-13 filter before thinking about residential in-duct UV
In-room UV is a different story--since it exposes all room air, pathogens start getting inactivated as soon as they're exhaled. The whole room becomes a disinfection reactor.
Ducted UV systems for your HVAC exist now, and don't need to bother with the being UVC since the UV doesn't leave the system.
If I recall correctly my furnace guy quoted me less than $2k for a whole house system that attaches to the air intake on my furnace.