Computational analysis of three lamp close conduit water disinfection UV reactor

The purpose of ultraviolet (UV) disinfection is to bring to end the growth and procreation of microorganism. UV reactors are used for the UV disinfection of the drinking water. Our goal of the current research work was properly locating the positions of the UV lamps in a three-lamp close conduit water disinfection UV reactor. Three positions of UV lamps are based on vertices of the four basic types of triangles (Equilateral, Right angle, Scalene and Isosceles). The objective function for optimized lamp positioning was Reduction Equivalent Dose (RED). To ascertain efficient UV dose delivery to pathogen, water disinfection UV reactors was simulated with the aid of computational fluid dynamics. The computational investigation was achieved employing ANSYS(R) Fluent 15.0 academic version. The turbulent flow was modeled using standard k-epsilon model, fluence rate (FR) was modeled using UVCalc3D model and pathogen transport was modeled using discrete phase model. The scalene lamp positioning results in highest RED value and isosceles lamp positioning results in lowest RED value. There is meager difference between the RED values of equilateral and scalene lamp positioning. Moreover, we found two lamps on the upstream side and one lamp on the downstream side results in better UV disinfection. The proposed methodology for the three-lamp model provides useful insights to the design and optimization of close conduit water disinfection UV reactor. This research work has evaluated, for the first time, a systematic methodology for three-lamp positioning to ameliorate the performance of UV reactor and has revitalized the comprehension about the contribution of FR distribution within the UV reactor.