What Is Shadowing of UV Lamps? And How to Overcome It?

Using UV light for disinfection is always the best idea to ensure safe and healthy drinking water. With high effectiveness, a UV light for disinfection will ensure it removes 99.9% of contaminants including bacteria, viruses, parasites, and more.

Although UV light for disinfection is highly effective, there is one major limitation that can affect its ability to disinfect the water.

And it is SHADOWING!

Let’s get into understanding what shadowing is, how it can affect the ability of UV lamps to disinfect and how to combat it.

Shadowing: What is it?

When light can’t pass through a solid object, it is known as shadowing. Because essentially, the light will create a shadow on the other side of the solid object.

This happens with UV light when it can’t pass through dirt particles flowing through the water. Although dirt particles do rotate through the UV unit from all sides, UV light can’t essentially penetrate the dirt particles effectively causing shadowing.

How does it affect the ability of UV lamps to disinfect?

Shadowing can decrease the efficiency of UV lamps to disinfect the water. Dirt particles contain a lot of bacteria on the outer surface as well as the inner nucleus of the particles.

Shadowing prevents the penetration of UV light through the dirt particles. This prevents the UV light from killing the bacteria and other microorganisms in dirt particles. This can affect the quality of water despite passing through the UV unit.

How to combat the shadowing effect?

Now, when you look for products that can help you combat the shadowing effect, you might come across U-shaped UV lamp units. However, let us tell you that it doesn’t matter whether you have U-shaped or traditional UV lamps systems. In any case, a UV light for disinfection won’t be able to penetrate the solid particles and kill the bacteria trapped inside the particles.

The best way to get rid of the shadowing effect is to use pre-filters. There are different types of pre-filters available on the market that will help you filter out the dirt and dust particles, reducing the chances of shadowing.

Pre-filters will also help you increase the efficiency of UV light for disinfection and reduce the need for frequent maintenance of UV units. Each pre-filter has a different filtering ability, micron rating, and efficiency rating.

Make sure to check these features before you install a pre-filter with your UV unit to reduce the effects of shadowing.

Bottom Line

Using UV light for disinfection is always beneficial to ensure your water is healthy and safe to drink. However, shadowing can reduce the efficiency of UV lamps. To combat this, installing a pre-filter is always the best choice.

To know more about shadowing, the efficiency of UV light for disinfection, and the best ways to improve the efficacy of the UV unit, get in touch with us at Light Spectrum Enterprises, Inc.

We manufacture high-quality, customized UV lamps for residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal UV units. We also offer expert advice and knowledge to our clients on how to best use their UV lamps for the highest efficiency.

Learn more about UV lamps from our sales team.