UVC Air Purifiers – A credible new product

Puravent welcome a new range of UVC Air Purifiers With current global pandemic causing a degree of mayhem in all markets it is perhaps no surprise that it is causing rapid changes in the air purification market. UVC air purifiers have up until 4 months ago been considered a bit niche particularly in Europe. Now, thanks to Covid -19, UVC air purifiers find them selves in the main stream. Puravent - specialists at UVC air purifiersPuravent has been in the UVC air purification business since we started trading in 2003. Our logo and name was even designed from the outset to reflect this specialism. Given our long knowledge the sector we are have always been fussy about what UVC air purifiers we offer to our customers. However with the Covid 19 situation it became clear that we needed to widen our offering. The good news is that there seems to a plethora of new products that have arrived on the market in the last 3 months so there was a lot of choice. The bad news was that the vast majority of these product ranges were riddled with rookie design flaws and peddled with misleading sales literature. It has been a wheat from chaff exercise. Luckily we have found the wheat and, stone the crows, we have added some mobile UVC air purifiers to our range. UVC Air Purifiers range expands to include Sodeca We are delighted to now offer the Sodeca UPM/EC range of UVC air purifiers. There are a number of things that Sodeca have got right in the design that other manufacturers of UVC air purifiers have typically got wrong. Airflow Direction. The direction of airflow in an mobile air purifier is important. The UPM/EC range has inlets that bring air in though the sides at the bottom of the unit. This means that particles, including airborne micro organisms are drawn downwards towards the floor rather than projected up wards into the breathing air of the rooms occupants. Purified air is discharged from the top of the unit to the air strata in the room where it enters in the breathing air space. Noise. The casing of the unit is made from acoustically insulated panels set into a box section frame. Also the fan which is the bit that generates the noise, is sandwiched between two filter stages which helps to suppress noise. UVC Chamber. UVC air purifiers are all about delivering a dose of energy that can penetrate the DNA or RNA of micro organisms to damage the strands so that the spore, bacteria or virus is rendered incapable of replication. That dose has two contributing factors. UVC intensity and time of exposure that the airborne micro organisms have to the UVC. The UPM/EC range cleverly locates its UVC lamps in the biggest void space in the unit which is where the air comes into the machine. This makes that UVC chamber and therefore the exposure time to the UVC energy as long as possible. That is brilliant when you consider that many UVC air purifiers in the market do not even have a UVC chamber! UVC Dose. With the combination of lamps and the UVC chamber size, the UVC dose is high and the units deliver a 1 pass UVC dose above 45 J/m2. This means that the range has URV (UVGI rating values) of 15 or 16. This is good news because it means that it will deactivate many of the problem micro organisms including MRSA, influenza, SARS , Covid -19 and TB to as near to 100% as matters, in one pass. Filter Choice. There is a clever choice of filters available. There are 3 different sizes of unit in the range and each size is available with either F7 and F9 filters or F7 and H14 filters. This means that you have a choice to have effective air cleaning above 95% of PM2.5 particles (i.e. those particles larger than 2.5 microns) or with the higher efficiency offered by the HEPA H14 filter you can remove greater than 99.995% of the most penetrating particles. UVC air purfierCarbon Filter. The UVC frequency is not the type of UV that creates ozone and hydroxyls. This means that the UVC will not treat odours and volatile organic compounds on the airflow. The carbon filter stage however will capture these gaseous contaminants without the use of ozone. Power. The two smallest units are powered by 230v single phase supply so will suit many office, retail and healthcare applications, i.e. suited to commercial air purifier applications. The largest of the three sizes runs from a 415v 3 phase supply so will be ideal for industrial air purifier applications. Airflow. The largest has an airflow of 3250m3/hr which is excellent for a mobile unit UVC air purifier. It means that in 500m3 air space it will deliver 6.5 air changes. That is great news because the air change rate (the relationship between air flow and room volume) tells you how often the air gets purified by the machine in each hour. With endless sources of air borne particles, air purification of this type is more about keeping air clean and pure on a continuous basis than purifying the air as single exercise. In Summary Good UVC air purifiers are relatively rare in the market, and good ones with sensible combination of filters, delivering an sensible dose of UVC onto a credible size of airflow are exceptionally rare. Delighted that we can now offer one such range to our customers. Please have a look at the Sodeca UPM/EC range in a bit more detail and call us if you need any more details.

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