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. 2024 Jul 9:24:100236.
doi: 10.1016/j.wroa.2024.100236. eCollection 2024 Sep 1.

UV LED wastewater disinfection: The future is upon us

Sean A MacIsaac  1 , Bailey Reid  1 , Carolina Ontiveros  1 , Karl G Linden  2 , Amina K Stoddart  1 , Graham A Gagnon  1
Affiliations

UV LED wastewater disinfection: The future is upon us

Sean A MacIsaac et al. Water Res X. .

Abstract

The world's first full-scale, 280 nm UV LED reactor for wastewater disinfection was tested at flows of 545 and 817 m3 day-1. The system achieved a > 3 average log reduction of total coliform at 545 m3 day-1 and the 817 m3 day-1 flow rate achieved over a > 2.5 average log reduction for all operational conditions. The delivered fluence of the full-scale system ranged from 28 to 148 mJ cm-2 and aligns with a UV auditing study that was conducted prior to the installation of the wastewater reactor. These results benchmark the performance that can be achieved by UV LED disinfection and further connect bench-scale disinfection results with full-scale performance. The approach established in this manuscript provides a novel tool for utilities when considering emerging UV disinfection technologies. In summary, this study establishes that UV LEDs are an effective wastewater disinfectant at-scale and are comparable to conventional low-pressure UV systems. This is the first instance where the efficacy of UV LEDs for municipal wastewater disinfection has been demonstrated using a large-scale installation at a functioning wastewater facility.

Keywords: Disinfection; LEDs; UV; Wastewater; Water treatment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Graham Gagnon reports financial support was provided by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Graham Gagnon reports financial support was provided by Water Research Foundation. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Image, graphical abstract
Graphical abstract
Fig 1
Fig. 1
Pre-installation UV auditing data for the EPWWTF comparing bench-scale LP and LED inactivation to full-scale conventional disinfection (n = 19). The dashed line with grey shaded region represents the full-scale conventional system performance and 95 % confidence interval about the mean log reduction value (LRV).
Fig 2
Fig. 2
Full-scale 280 nm UV LED performance data for 545 and 817 m3 day−1 for single and dual panel UV LED operation. The top row shows the MPN 100 mL−1counts vs the bottom row which shows the relative log reduction values for each of the operational conditions.
Fig 3
Fig. 3
Fluence estimation for each normalized power setpoint for single and dual UV LED panel disinfection and faceted for each operational flow rate. Error bars represent the 95 % confidence intervals. The colour ramp indicates the UV LED system's normalized, relative power output.
Fig 4
Fig. 4
Schematic of the 280 nm UV LED reactor. (A) overview of sampling ports at the influent and effluent of reactor; (B) photograph of the installed reactor at the EPWWTF; C) View of the internal reactor chamber before and after opening the influent wastewater flow valve.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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