In the age of covid, businesses, building owners, facilities managers, and the like are scrambling to find ways to disinfect surfaces that people come into frequent contact with. In the US alone, millions of elevators transport billions of passengers each year. From urban high rises carrying cabs filled with workers, to hospitals, universities, apartment buildings, airports and more, elevators ferry some 20,000 passengers each day to their vertical destinations.
In addition to the numerous touch points found in elevators, from handrails to call buttons, elevators are small, enclosed spaces where germs can easily lurk on surfaces and in the air. Frequent cleaning of elevator cabs is time consuming and costly. With new social distancing measures that limit the number of riders in an elevator, taking elevators offline for cleaning would further delay people getting where they need to be.
Enter UV light disinfection. UV light has long been used to disinfect air, liquid and surfaces. With the shortage of PPE in hospitals and medical facilities, UV light found a new application protecting healthcare workers by disinfecting their masks and gowns so they could be safely re-used.
Hvordan UV-lys desinficerer
Known as ultraviolet germicidal irradiation or UV disinfection, UV light effects germs at the molecular level. Short-wave UVC light penetrates microbes and interferes with their ability to reproduce, rendering them 'inactive'. Every microbe has a specific deactiviation point. The deactiviation point is dependent upon the amount of light the germ is exposed to, the wavelength of light, and the duration of exposure. In light measurement, this is referred to as the dose or fluence, and is measured in J/cm2.
Light in the UVC part of the spectrum, which is from 100 - 280 nm, does not occur in nature as our atmosphere filters out this light from reaching earth. There are many man-made light sources that will generate UVC light. Some of those sources include:
UV lysspektrum
Lavtryks kviksølvlamper
Lavtryks amalgamlamper
Mellemtryk kviksølvlamper
Excimer lamper
Lysemitterende dioder (LED'er)
Xenon lamper
Each of these light sources will have a different 'peak wavelength' so is important to know the specifications of the source you are using in order to get an appropriate measurement system to validate it.
