While awaiting full access to their labs due to Covid-19 restrictions, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have taken this rare opportunity to report the technical details of pioneering research they conducted on the disinfection of drinking water using ultraviolet (UV) light.

Back in 2012, the NIST scientists and their collaborators published several papers on some fundamental findings with potential benefits to water utility companies. But these articles never fully explained the irradiation setup that made the work possible.

Now, for the first time, NIST researchers are publishing the technical details of the unique experiment, which relied on a portable laser to test how well different wavelengths of UV light inactivated different microorganisms in water. The work appears in the Review of Scientific Instruments.

“We’ve been wanting to formally write this up for years,” says Tom Larason, an electronics engineer in the Sensor Science Division at NIST. “Now we have time to tell the world about it.”

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