A novel reactor was designed and implemented for water purification using deep ultraviolet light emitting diodes (LEDs). The focus was on minimizing the number of LEDs required for effective germicidal action. Simulation studies were carried out on the flow of water as well as the irradiance of UV. Variation was made in the beam divergence of the UV sources and reflectivity of optical coatings used for photon recycling. Based on optimized reactor designs, water purification was carried out both in the static and flow-through configuration. Water from various sources was spiked with a known bacterial strain, exposure studies were carried out and germicidal effect was determined. Our results indicate that under optimal design, a 3 mL volume of water shows a three order inactivation using a single UV-LED in a static reactor in 180 s. For a flow-through geometry, only three LEDs were used in the reactor implementation, and a multi-pass procedure was used to purify 150 mL of water from an Escherichia coli CFU count of 4.3 × 10⁴/mL to 12/mL. While slow, this process requires less than 2 W, and can be powered from rechargeable sources. Faster processes can be implanted using multiple such reactor units in parallel, and can be optimized to the requirement and power levels.

设计并实施了一种新型反应器，用于使用深紫外发光二极管（LED）进行水净化。重点是减少有效杀菌作用所需的LED数量。对水的流动以及紫外线的照射进行了模拟研究。紫外线源的光束发散度和用于光子回收的光学涂层的反射率发生了变化。基于优化的反应堆设计，净水既可以采用静态配置，也可以采用流通配置。将来自各种来源的水加注已知的细菌菌株，进行了暴露研究并确定了杀菌效果。我们的结果表明，在最佳设计下，3 mL体积的水在静态反应器中在180 s内使用单个UV-LED表现出三级失活。大肠杆菌的CFU计数为4.3×10 ⁴ / mL至12 / mL。虽然速度很慢，但此过程所需的功率不到2 W，并且可以通过可充电电源供电。可以使用多个此类反应器单元并行植入更快的过程，并且可以针对需求和功率水平进行优化。