Innovative UV treatment of liquids
Technology solutions that are evidence based
Novolabs offers a modular UV system to treat a wide range of liquids and flowrates. Our super-critical UV device allows for UV disinfection of ultra-low UV transmittance liquids. Get in touch with us to discuss your particular requirements.
What is super-critical UV?
Supercritical flow is triggered by releasing water from a slot down an open channel. In this form, instead of having the hydraulic energy being stacked up as potential in its depth, the energy is predominantly kinetic in a very thin but very fast flow.
Although it might be counterintuitive to think that moving liquid faster through a UV reactor would improve treatment, we have proven (particularly for low UVT liquids) this instead yields a significant net improvement in overall treatment efficiency compared to traditional market technology. This is because UV light intensity is extinguished in the liquid at an exponential rate with respect to the depth of penetration. This exponential function becomes more profound as the UVT decreases (i.e. the liquid is less clear).
We are therefore able to offer to the market a system with efficient disinfection of low UVT liquids while maintaining high flow capacity where, by comparison, standard UV technologies are ineffective.
Advantages of the Super-critical UV device
Ultra-Low UV Transmittance (UVT) liquids
The super-critical UV device developed at Massey University was designed to primarily target ultra-low UV transmittance (UVT) liquids.
This technology is commercially ready and has been tested in a range of wastewaters with effective kills of E.coli and Enterococci in liquids with UVTs well below 40% while maintaining high throughput. Please contact us if you have an application in which low UVT is an issue for you.
Access for easy maintenance
A common issue raised by operators of large UV systems is that current automated cleaning systems do not work as required. For a traditional submerged bulb system this results in operators having to pull bulbs out of open channels for cleaning. We have developed a system at NovoLabs where the bulbs can be accessed within seconds to allow quick and easy maintenance.
Modular Design
The Supercritical UV device is built to be modular.
What this means is we have a base unit (single module) that we can add more Supercritical UV modules to depending on your treatment requirements.
Parallel Processing
The modular design of the Supercritical UV device has another large advantage over traditional systems - Parallel processing.
Parallel processing has multiple advantages in a UV system:
Turn modules (and therefore bulbs) on and off as required
Saves on operating costs
Reduces wasted bulb run hours
In all UV systems, a UV bulb can stop working at times. In traditional submerged bulb systems this would result in water getting less treatment or bypassing the treatment all together. In the Supercritical UV device, if a bulb outage (or other fault) is detected, the PLC will automatically turn that module off and notify the operators. This prevents untreated effluent bypassing disinfection.
