Home UV food sanitizer concept
Over 76,000,000 people get food poisoning each year in the US. We’ve all seen the news reports about tainted salsa and the recalls for ground beef and such. For my Industrial Design studio class I have come up with a simple solution: use UV light to sanitize foods and other objects.
Campylobacter is the most common cause of food borne illness.
Philips UV toothbrush sanitizer.
What you see above is a non-working form model made out of common kitchen mixing bowls, a strainer, a curtain rod finial, and some foamcore. The idea is to work out the rough size, shape and design features of the concept before finishing it up in 3D CAD.
For this concept I am using efficient UV LEDs in the lid. A transformer and timer are contained in the base of the bowl. Electrical contacts on the lid will transfer power to the LEDs when the lid is placed on top of the bowl. Food is washed and drained in the colander before being placed in the bowl. The highly reflective inner surfaces help ensure even UV light distribution. Exposure time can be varied based on the types of foods being treated. The UVC rays used do not penetrate very well so longer exposure times may be required for things like a bowl of lettuce while shorter times can be used for an apple (only the exterior skin can be treated).
mockup in use
There will be more details to follow as I continue to develop this concept over the next few weeks. While my initial target application is for the slow food movement, I imagine that this simple concept could have much greater implications on a global scale. Let me know what you think.
September 13th, 2008 at 9:59 am
I think the ideal place to put this would be in a microwave, as an optional setting that sanitizes without cooking power.
Using UV in this way is a good way to kill some food borne microbes, but has a few problems. It will only kill organisms on the surface of foods. It will not affect anything in the cellular level of food or even on the bottom side of food, like under a lettuce leaf. This wouldn’t have helped with the tomato case because the microbes were in the tomatoes themselves. You need to irradiate food to do this (which is what 90% of the industrialized world does).
I think this will help because most cases of food poising comes from people cross-contaminating their own food at home by handling raw food, like chicken, and then touching uncooked food like fruits and vegetables. Proper hand washing is the best way to prevent this type of food poisoning.
September 13th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Ideally this technology would be built into an existing appliance (with the microwave being the most logical candidate). However, my task was to design a new product, not a new feature for an existing product.
I am aware that UV irradiation only works on the surface level of opaque items and requires line-of-sight exposure to be effective. My focus is more in providing a simple solution to reduce cross contamination in the home (specifically focusing on the slow food movement) and not to solve the large scale producer level mass contamination issues. Even if only 75-80% of the microbes on fresh food are eradicated it would result in a huge reduction in food borne illness. Think of this concept like Purell® hand sanitizer for your food without the bitter aftertaste and burning of the throat. Don’t ask how I know…
September 13th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Maybe a new line of Purell-based salad dressings and condiments?
September 14th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
That would give new meaning to “Zesty Italian” ;-)
December 19th, 2009 at 3:02 am
as the mechanism is falwless! It does the cleaning perfectly with less effort manually.
November 3rd, 2010 at 4:54 pm
I am extremely interested in the use of UV Light for sanitizing food…….. which is how I came across this website. I would love to reduce as much as humanly (and scientificly)possible……. even if only on the surface. We love fruit, and I personally am so thankful when summer comes along, for just that alone, the awesome fruit that we have in this Country!!!!!! However… we end up throwing away large amounts of fruit each season, due to molds, that eventually just takes off suddenly, and destroys the fruit, often peaches, grapes being the hardest hit. We but whole flats of these, and I am so, so sad when this happens, and it happens more than I like to think off. If UV helped to solve even 1/2 of this, I would be very excited!
Do you know if the hand held units that I have readily found online, would work for this purpose right now, at whatever strenth they are?
Also…… since you are getting into this, could you tell me what the wavelength, or other minimum specs. I should be looking for, in order to obtain a very reliable unit for surface sanitizing, like cutting boards, from Salmonilla, after cutting up raw chicken?
Do you know where I can visit online to easily purchase a unit that would be a good, durable, and sufficiently powerful unit for thye Home/Kitchen use?
Thank you, and good researching!
Paul Out!
August 16th, 2012 at 7:47 am
I am thinking to put UV light in the refrigerator
Would that help kill the bacteria and help meat, vegs and fruits stay longer?
August 17th, 2012 at 3:38 pm
It might help to kill the bacteria on the surfaces exposed to the light, but I doubt that it would help keep things fresh. Many food and beverage items degrade quickly when exposed to UV light. Also, materials inside the refrigerator aren’t designed for UV exposure so you might damage the refrigerator over time. I think spot treatments of selected food items prior to consumption is a better bet.
November 15th, 2012 at 12:57 pm
I am interested in the idea of this technology. Can you possibly point me in the direction of any manufactoring applications or technology that exists using UV??
I am interested for our food plant t sanitize process areas for example.
Anything already on the market??
December 13th, 2012 at 10:36 am
Aaron, searching the internet I have found several UV sanitizer products but nothing quite like what I describe in my concept.