The Food & Beverage water purification systems market covers many sectors, such as bottled water, food packaging, crop irrigation, fizzy drinks, beer, dairy plants and meat and poultry processors. Ultraviolet (UV) technology has been successfully used for the control of pathogen microorganisms, with the most common application for UV light in water treatment systems being disinfection. The technology can also be utilised for sugar syrup, TOC (total organic carbon) reduction, chlorine/chloramines reduction and ozone destruction.

Water filtration systems are also used to disinfect any process water used as an ingredient in food or beverage products. Bottled water and product water for concentrates, soft drinks, tea and beer are commonly disinfected with 254nm UV systems.

Reliable UV water purification systems

Heat treatment-pasteurization techniques are efficient in handling low UV transmittance (UVT) and some degree of suspended solids (SS) and total dissolved solids (TDS) and are preferred by many product producers. However pasteurization is expensive and thus UV has greater green credentials as energy costs continue to rise. Our UV water treatment systems are based on a non-chemical process that doesn’t change any physical characteristic of the fluid. Concerns of chemical handling and cost of removal of chlorine from the water stream are also eliminated. Most importantly, our UV water purification systems do not promote the generation of disinfection by-products, such as Trihalomethanes (THM), which regulatory agencies have classified as carcinogenic at certain levels in drinking water.

Affordable UV water filtration systems

Our water filtration systems can also be used to replace granular activated carbon (GAC) beds or placed post GAC to provide a multiple barrier approach which minimizes or eliminates pathogen ‘break-through’. When Reverse Osmosis (RO) is present the UV can do the same job or be placed Pre RO. Here it has proven to reduce maintenance costs by increasing the service interval.

Our UV water purification systems offer a cost effective means to not only disinfect, but eliminate chlorine and chloramines in the pre-treatment phase.

Applicable Applications

Disinfection

This is the most common application of UV light in water treatment. Correctly sized UV water filtration systems are designed to meet a minimum of 3 Log reduction a minimum of 30,000 micro-watt seconds (or 30mJ/cm2) at one year, the end-of-lamp life (EOL). Some typical locations of installation would be: points-of-fill, points-of-rinse, brine solutions, post-carbon filter, pre-membrane filtration or RO (reverse osmosis), post-water and pre-syrup storage tanks. Our UV water purification systems can significantly reduce the microbial counts by destroying at least 99.9% of the bacteria present in the influent stream, when installed at the appropriate locations in the treatment process loop such as downstream of the carbon bed and/or directly upstream of the membrane filtration or RO.

Ozone Destruction

Ozone is commonly used in the pretreatment area of a water system as well as for sanitizing process and recalculating systems. Prior to the point-of-use, the residual ozone needs to be destroyed to ensure the product is not contaminated. Because of non-chemical and fast mechanism, UV technology is the preferred method for this application. After taking into the appropriate variables, properly sized water filtration systems can be guaranteed to destroy the ozone to non-detectable limits, insuring the integrity of the process and the product.

Chlorine Destruction

While the addition of chlorine to city water may control bacteria levels, they have undesirable effects on the degradation of membrane filtration or RO. But popular methods of removal, such as carbon beds or chemical injection, have proven to be problematic. Sodium metabisulfite involves removing one chemical with another and creates food for organisms, while carbon beds can be inefficient, vulnerable to channeling and provide breeding grounds for micro-organisms. Aquafine Corporation pioneered the technology of chlorine destruction utilising UV water treatment systems in the pre-membrane filtration or RO make-up water stream.