The Pros and Cons of using UVC Low Pressure Amalgam Lamps for Municipal Drinking Water Disinfection

Drinking water is the most valuable and scarce resource on the planet.  While water covers 97% of Earth’s surface only 2.5% of the total water is suitable for drinking, with the remainder being salt water.  Clean drinking water is even harder to find and is estimated to be less that one 1% of the total drinkable water.  Untreated water is becoming more and more of a health risk. Experts estimate that more than two million people die every year as a result of drinking untreated unsanitary water.  Ingesting untreated water can result in many types of infections and intestinal illnesses.

Consumption of drinkable water around the world has been estimated to have increased six times over since 1900.  However, during that time the world’s population has approximately only tripled.  The availability of drinking water as a result of this dramatic increase in usage has become one of the most important problems of this century.  Great emphasis is being placed on finding alternative methods of disinfection while preserving the environment; and Ultraviolet (UVC) Amalgam Lamp disinfection is leading the way.  UVC germicidal light offers an environmentally friendly way of disinfecting water while managing to be much more cost effective than the equivalent ozone disinfection and/or membrane filtration methods.  The use of UVC germicidal light compares favorably with other water disinfection methods (i.e., chemical, reverse osmosis, MPUV, etc.) in terms of cost of labor and the need for technically trained personnel for operation.

Using ultraviolet (UVC) light for drinking water disinfection purposes isn’t new, in fact it was first used for treating drinking water in the USA back in 1916.  While germicidal UVC can not replace chemical disinfection entirely for non-point-of-use Municipal Drinking Water Disinfection purposes, it does allow for a significant reduction of supplemental chemicals.  Unlike chemical treatments UVC being a physical treatment process leaves no disinfection residual in the water once it has passed the irradiated area, thus offering no protection in the municipal water pipes, where water can spend days before consumption.  As a result in Municipal Drinking Water applications Amalgam lamps are used in a multi-barrier approach ensuring complete inactivation of waterborne pathogens resistant to chemical treatments such as Cryptosporidium, Giardia and viruses, much like ozone and filtration methods are used.  The benefits of using UVC Light over competing technologies for water disinfection are many.  UVC has no effect on the taste, on smell or pH value of the water which plagues the other competing technologies. 

Amalgam lamps are particularly well suited for Municipal Drinking Water Type applications.  Amalgam lamps produce significantly higher UVC output than conventional standard (425mA) or high output (800mA) low pressure germicidal lamps thus offering more than triple the efficiency and life over competing Medium Pressure Ultraviolet (MPUV) lamp varieties and at significant lower overall cost. 

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