UV intensity measurement

I have a couple hundred, left over from a project. Send me a sase and I'll donate one.

But it sounds like you don't have much light to work with. Can you hack a path to get more UV?

On a sunny day (Mon, 30 Jun 2014 16:47:34 +0100) it happened TTman wrote in :

I have some old EPROM eraser that uses such a sterilisation tube. hard to measure, find a photo cell with UV sensitivity. I know a trick of putting a botle with London Tonic next to it, it contains Kinine, and lights up in the UV. Several other things light up in the UV.

Maybe sense the bulb current? ...Jim Thompson

Any idea of the wavelength? (Will it go through normal glass?) Maybe a photodiode... a bare photodiode (no glass cover, if the wavelenght is too short.) And then an ammeter.

George H. (I think a photodiode is my answer to all light measurement questions... maybe I need some more "tools" in my kit.)

There are lots of cheap glow-in-the-dark paints that are good UV to visible converters. The ones that I've tried are very fast, nanosecond stuff.

Here's a UV led hitting one...

The orange phosphor seemed to be best for dumping UV into a silicon photodiode.

Due to converns over ozone depletion, there are numerous UV light meter type products available to measure UV intensity and exposure. I don't know what wavelength range your UV light runs, but if it's a germicidal water sterilizer, it's probably UV-C in the 100 nm to 280 nm range. Make sure your prospective UV light meter works in this range. Most that I've seen only do UV-A and UV-B (280 nm to 400nm). Actually, I'm not sure you can find a cheap one that does just UV-C. Anyway, dig through this mess and see what you can find find: If you want precision, search for a UV radiometer.

Lots of UV things, like eprom erasers, have a view port to verify operation, that filters most of the UV out.

I have a UV water santiation system. It sounds like its similar to what you have.

It came with a UV monitor. A cheap gizmo calibrated from 0 to 100% of the lamp's designed output. It appears to be built around a Hamamatsu R1228 phototube.

I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to get the data sheet for this and design something around it.

The problem with this approach: UV lamps emit some light in the blue (visible) spectrum as well. From what I've been told, with age, the UV emissions (germicidal lamps are around 265 nm) decay at a faster rate than the visible light. Something to do with the lamp's glass degrading.

They make (and I have) a UV monitor for a sterilization system. Its an expensive piece of junk (about $500). But its built around a relatively inexpensive phototube designed for UV monitoring.

"Description: .... Phtdiode"

I've got lots of these from past projects. One wrong connection and 'Pht!'

Lots of UV things, like eprom erasers, have a view port to verify operation, that filters most of the UV out.