Comments
@Gavriel Kleinwaks (who works in this area) Gives her recommendation. When asked whether she "backed" them:
I do! (Not in the financial sense, tbc.) But just want to flag that my endorsement is confounded. Basically, Aerolamp uses the design of the nonprofit referenced in my post, OSLUV, and most of my technical info about far-UV comes from a) Aerolamp cofounder Viv Belenky and b) OSLUV. I've been working with Viv and OSLUV for a couple of years, long before the founding of Aerolamp, and trust their information, but you should know that my professional opinion is highly correlated with theirs—1Day Sooner doesn't have the equipment to do independent testing.
I think it's the ideal outcome that a bunch of excellent researchers took a look at the state of the field and made their own product. So I'm not too worried about relying on this team's info, but you should just have that context.
Fwiw, Mox (moxsf.com), run by Austin Chen, has installed a couple of Aerolamps and they were easy to set up and are running smoothly.
Thanks for the post! On faruvc.org, you say:
The two lamps you recommend on that site are Aerolamp (500 USD for one lampp) and Nukit Torch (345 USD for 4 smaller lamps). Do you have any sense of:
The Nukit torches put together have about half the output of Aerolamp. I expect Nukits (and most other non-USHIO KrCl bulbs) to last about 1-2k hours while the USHIO bulb should last 10k-14k hours. All published at reports.osluv.org
There's no other salient differences. Multiple small lamps spread out the light more and are easier to set up portably, and might be safer in low-ceilinged (<8ft) spaces. If you plan to use the lamps intermittently (like at one-off events and appointments, a few times a year or a few hours at a time) then the torches may make more sense. EDIT: The old torches are discontinued now, V2s to come soon, and might have better output/lifetime characteristics. Exciting if so!
I estimate that an Aerolamp in a 250 sqft room will deliver about 1000 CFM CADR with respect to flu/covid, while a high-quality air purifier will deliver ~250 quietly or ~400 loudly. So an Aerolamp is roughly twice as cost effective on a $/CFM basis (in quiet mode) or on par (in loud mode).
That being said--and I say this as an Aerolamp founder--absolutely, absolutely get an air purifier first, and a far-UVC lamp as an additional supplement. I like the Levoit 200S personally. For one thing all estimates of far-UVC efficacy are based on the assumption of a well-mixed room--an air purifier will provide that, eliminate any air chemistry concerns from the UVC, and will provide other health benefits as well.
I have downloaded and looked at the tests from Aerolamp and Nukit Torch.
Aerolamp does show a consistent output and seems to be a well thought out design for its use: larger rooms, giving overhead exposure, not close to people so mainly ceiling mounted.
The Nukit Torch was modified for continuous use, while it is not designed for that. I am not sure that leads to completely objective test results.
My question is: What is the basis for your assessment that the expected lifetime of your product is 10 to 14 times longer?
Moreover, with all the electronic components that are nowadays incorporated in modern lighting equipment it is not only the "bulb" that can fail. Many "20.000 to 50.000 hours"-LED products from reputable manufacturers have shown to fail after only a few 1000 hours or less. And often the LED's themselves are OK but the power supply or ballast failed somewhere.
So I am wary of these claims without knowing the testing method.
This paper shows up to 10k hours for the Ushio B1 bulb: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/lsj/50/7/50_394/_pdf this poster extends the data and shows an L70 of around ~13.5k hours: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0694/8637/9189/files/240617_Yagyu_ICFUST_Poster2V2.pptx?v=1751931924 I've also seen a fair amount of testing from OSLUV that makes me personally believe these publications--Ushio sank 10 years of R&D into their emitter, and it's really good. It's also expensive, limited in some ways, and only available from one manufacturer, but it definitely seems to have great stable output and impressive lifespan. But fair point about the electronics--the lifetime estimate is based on the bulb lifetime. Aerolamp hasn't even existed for 10,000 hours. This is why we have a no-questions-asked return/replace policy--if your lamp fails we'll send you a new one.
Thank you for the links, very helpful. Also interesting to see that the lamp consists of 4 separate bulbs. I suppose that will help with the longevity as every bulb makes a 1/4 of the output, where as other designs might to lead to "overdrive", improving temporary maximum output but at a cost of earlier degradation.
When do you think the Aerolamp will be available outside the USA?
Yeah I think that is part of it! Excimer lamps are really cool. They do all sorts of other stuff too, monkeying with the glass composition, gas mix, voltage waveform, etc. It's pretty optimized--I'm hopeful that other bulb manufacturers will copy them(/have the market incentive to bother copying them), a lot of these optimizations are totally public information that's been published in journals since the 90s.
I'm hopeful that we can start a slow rollout of international shipping in the next few days/weeks, we're setting things up with DHL right now
I think the biggest difference between the Aerolamp and Nukit is the bulb: the Aerolamp uses a Care222 bulb which I expect to last much longer.
It depends on how important it is to you to minimize noise, and how big the room is (since filter-based purifiers clean a given amount of air per minute while UVC depends on the size of the space). https://illuminate.osluv.org/ is not super user-friendly, but will calculate the CADR-equivalent for you of a given UVC setup.