Pulsed UV Disintegration (PUVD): a new sterilisation mechanism

The recently discovered (by Wekhof, [1]) disinfection mechanism with a pulsed UV light has been found to have a unique potential for the control of various hospital-acquired infections and for the sterilisation of food packaging or of packaged medical solutions. One requirement of this UV mechanism is the need to adjust the percentile components of UVC, UVB and UVA emitted by the the pulse source to suit specific sterilization conditions. Our data show that it can be also effective with only UVB and UVA light, and without any UVC component. The exact sterilisation effect is due to a targeted and momentous overheating effect which ruptures the micro-organisms. The strength of this effect was checked at various peak power loads and on different substrates for micro-organisms, and the nature of the cell damage verified with e-m photography. This has shown that this new mechanism is actually a stand-alone disinfection method and is highly flexible as to the contaminated media presented, such as medical solutions packaged into clear PET, (PVC, PP, etc.) foil bags, or to plastic food packaging, without inducing noticeable changes. It has also been shown that the energy efficiency of this sterilisation mechanism is very competitive with that of five known basic disinfection methods such as by thermal means, by ionising radiation, by electro-polation, by chemical means or by mechanical means. Examples of potential applications in controlling hospital acquired infections, sterilising medical tools, food packaging or packaged medical solutions are given.