Bioaerosols Spreading in Confined Spaces

Ultraviolet germicidal irradiation has proven to be an efficient method of rendering airborne microorganisms inactive. In the present study, a novel model for airborne virus/bacteria inactivation using UV-light is presented. A particle-to-particle photonic approach that takes into account each of the interactions between the microorganism particles and UV-light photons is obtained. The main advantage of the presented model is its faithfulness to the physical reality of the inactivation process, i.e. that the ultraviolet inactivation effect is a stochastic process not a deterministic one. This characteristic allows the model to track and calculate the inactivation success for each of the single particles conforming a particle cloud. The model is validated against published data of inactivation of aerolized Escherichia coli bacteria in a UV-reactor.