Millions of dollars are spent on an air-conditioning system in the buildings. Several billion-dollar worth industry is thriving on this. The entire crux of the air-conditioning is, as the name suggests “The conditioning of the air”.

One place in this whole process, where the air finally meets the conditioning is at the cooling coil. It all happens at the cooling coil, where the cooling is finally transferred to the air. At this point, if the process is either inefficient in any sense, the entire purpose of the air-conditioning can be defeated.

It is therefore important to maintain the cooling coils so that they remain clean and perform their job of air transfer efficiently.

But these cooling coils attract the growth of Mold and Mildew as they are always damp and dark, which results in their contamination. This can cause the following adverse impact:

• Health issues among people regular to the building.
• high energy consumption leading to high operating & maintenance costs.

Keeping in mind the critical part of the cooling coils, it is important to keep them clean and germ-free.

Traditional Coil Cleaning Method

In the past, various methods have been used to keep the coils clean, which have their own pros and cons, as are listed below:

1. Scrubbing: As the name suggests, this method involves scrubbing the coils with some hard brush. While this process is simple to implement, it only superficially cleans the coils. It is a temporary solution and also repeated scrubbing can cause damage to the coil. Further, during the coil cleaning process, the machines need to be shut down for maintenance, and this needs to happen quite frequently as the mold growth is very fast.
2. Chemical Washing: In this type of cleaning, either acidic or alkaline chemicals are sprayed on the coils to remove the bio-films. This solution again is temporary and non-eco-friendly. Also, the harsh chemicals that are put on the coils reduce their life. This method needs a special person to implement the solution and in this method too, the system needs to be shut down during the cleaning process.
3. Steam Cleaning: This solution too like the methods discussed above is a temporary solution for cleaning coils. The cleaning is only done on the upper coils and does not reach the depth of the coils. This method is costlier than other methods and requires a specialist to implement. In this method too there is machine downtime during the cleaning process.

We have discussed the traditional methods of coil cleaning, which happen to be tedious, time-consuming, and less effective. Now we will discuss a new coil cleaning method, which is gaining popularity worldwide and is in fact recommended by many health organizations as well, as it is safe, effective, and eco-friendly.

This is the use of UVGI Systems for Coil Cleaning.

UVGI Systems: Ultra Violet Germicidal Irradiation (UVGI) Systems are classic air disinfectants. The UVC Lamps are placed inside the AHU and the UVC rays from these lamps are made to shine on the coils continuously. The UVC rays are known to be most lethal for killing germs and because of this, these are a permanent solution to keeping the coils free from germs and contamination.

This is the most eco-friendly and safe solution to kill germs as it does not require any chemicals or hard brushes for cleaning and therefore can in no way cause damage to the coils. It is a non-invasion and non-aggressive method and requires zero manpower costs. And since the UVGI Lamps are doing their work while the system is running, there is no question of system downtime. 

Choosing the right kind of UVC Lamps is very critical, else even making the intelligent decision of using UVGI Systems for coil cleaning, you might not get the desired results. In our next post, we give you a few pointers on what you need to look at in order to choose the right kind of UVGI for your project.

To buy InviroTech Spectra UVGI Systems for your projects, contact us