Eden Park Illumination has been awarded a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to commercialize microplasma ultraviolet (UV) lighting tiles for water purification and sterilization. Eden Park will develop and demonstrate large-scale microplasma/microcavity UV flat lamps (in the range of UVB - UVC) having areas up to 1 sq ft for water purification and disinfection.
The grant's principal investigator, Dr. Sung-Jin Park, one of the Founders of Eden Park Illumination, commented, "This grant provides the resources to optimize UV microplasma technology in such a way to make it commercially viable. This technology will bring a range of new products to the water industry that will provide mercury free, energy efficient, low maintenance and very cost effective operation that can augment or replace conventional mercury-based UV technologies."
The grant’s objective will be to demonstrate large-scale products for thin microplasma UV flat lighting systems having a radiating area up to 1 sq ft at a UV conversion efficiency greater than 20%. A scaled production methodology will be put in place and an optimized power delivering system will be designed and developed according to the scale of each size class of microplasma lamps. Also, lamps with other emitters (molecular gas emitters or UV conversion phosphors) capable of generating photons in various UV wavelength ranges (172 to 310 nm) will be developed to provide a broad range of UV applications for water treatment.
The US DOE SBIR Phase II Grant was awarded to Eden Park Illumination as a follow-up to a Phase I grant successfully completed in 2012. The company is now engaging industry partner companies as it looks to broadly commercialize the technology.
Source: Eden Park Illumination
