Hi 

There a good idea where th germicicdial FL lamps can used in and thats in home fridges, which have windowless doors. Here how it simply works, the lamp will have power cut off when you open the fridge and the ordinary fridge light will come on! There would be two LED indicators to indicate if the Germicidial lamp is in operation or if it is not working 

This idea will not be used in beer and supermarket fridges where the shelves can be seen regardless of open or not

I think that is a good idea, you could get rich from that.

Seems like a good idea. My only concern is that it could degrade food and packaging.

I seen something like that once in a place where i did IT job...

We had a water dispenser there that looked like


The blank panel below the place for the cups was a door, and inside was some volume with a shelf that looked like a fridge, except there was no cooling in it (the compressor system was cooling only the water). There was however some sort of lantern-like device in the roof of that volume

The lantern was made of Plastic grid - not airtight. Inside it was a small glow lamp - the size of an Osram starter glow lamp, with 1 electrode inside and the lamp was wrapped in a strip thin Metallic net. The electrode in the lamp was supplied from a PCB with some circuitry, IIRC it looked like a single transistor oscillator

On the back of the unit was a mechanical timer knob (like you turn it to X minutes and it ticks its way back to off) that would switch this weird lantern to the off position

The entire device was broken, i repaired the water cooling/heating part so we could use it but the light device never worked (maybe the electronics were blown)

I think this was some sort of O3 generator ? Like if you put stuff to store in the bottom box, it would make it smell fresh ?

The capacitively coupled small lamp means that the power was very low. There werent any means to switch it off when the door is opened

It could be a cleaning feature, so once every few weeks, you take all the food out (to avoid destroying the food also if the food shadows the lamp from some bacteria), close the fridge and put it in a cleaning cycle (like a timed session of the lamp on to kill the bacteria) that uses a door interlock (like a microwave oven) so the lamp goes out if the door is opened while the lamp is on and there is an indicator when it is on, and an EOL indicator on the front of the firdge.

Cool, now lets place devils advocate because people will do really stupid things, now that you have invented an air conditioned high speed sun tanning locker, what is going to stop someone from crawling in there and using it to get a tan? 

But using a UVC is a neat idea, but even a Steripen which is about the only fully exposed UVC light source available to the general public and it's used to sterilize drinking water by the bottle has a warning about not sticking it up your rear, and two sensor probes not allowing you to turn the light on, in-case for some unknown reason you somehow manage to slip and fall directly on it and some how also mange to push the switch to turn it on, so I had to email them and ask, and they laughed and said it was actually a problem in the past... 

The shelves with food on them ?

Those will block the UVC light from reaching the ketchup that leaked down the back of the fridge now growing the mold, so people will have to remove them so they will also remove them to climb in ..

With the shelves removed it would make more sense to clean off the ketchup than to sterilise it with UV

I would not be concerned with humans doing stupid things. There is other problem : Cats know exactly where the food is, and are going to try to get there. Your cat will slip into the fridge when you dont notice and you'll close the door on him

just leave the cat in the fridge, when it gets hungry enough it will lick the ketchup off the back wall.. But really I was just throwing this out there to show what engineers have to think about before giving the general pubic a shortwave radiating light source, you basically have to make it so a sue happy person will not be able to win because you have taken just about every possible precaution to prevent the end user from abusing there own right to be an idiot.. And I still think it's a great idea and I've used it before to get rid of the smell in an old fridge, it actually works very well, but again I know the danger of shortwave UV and treat it with respect, but not every one will...

I seen something like that once in a place where i did IT job...

We had a water dispenser there that looked like


The blank panel below the place for the cups was a door, and inside was some volume with a shelf that looked like a fridge, except there was no cooling in it (the compressor system was cooling only the water). There was however some sort of lantern-like device in the roof of that volume

The lantern was made of Plastic grid - not airtight. Inside it was a small glow lamp - the size of an Osram starter glow lamp, with 1 electrode inside and the lamp was wrapped in a strip thin Metallic net. The electrode in the lamp was supplied from a PCB with some circuitry, IIRC it looked like a single transistor oscillator

On the back of the unit was a mechanical timer knob (like you turn it to X minutes and it ticks its way back to off) that would switch this weird lantern to the off position

The entire device was broken, i repaired the water cooling/heating part so we could use it but the light device never worked (maybe the electronics were blown)

I think this was some sort of O3 generator ? Like if you put stuff to store in the bottom box, it would make it smell fresh ?

The capacitively coupled small lamp means that the power was very low. There werent any means to switch it off when the door is opened

Did it look like this lamp ? http://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2404&pos=7&pid=65719

There are many other ways how anyone can kill or injure themselves with a fridge. I have not seen much effort done to prevent any of them...

The UV source was a cylinder Glass lamp of similar size, but - it had only one electrode inside, and it had no base - the wire coming into the lamp was just connected with a wire that connects to the PCB

Heya all

Wouldn't the UVC lamp sanitise the food because cold is caused by bacteria and therefore certain food can be kept fresh for longer! The whole idea is to sanitise the fridge as well as keeping the food lasting longer. Ah yes with the plastic packaging, I think it would take longer for any significant yellowing to occur but I see the point, it could make it fragile, imagine your unopened coka plastic bottle turning brittle thanks to the UVC rays and the next minute you will have an unholy mess of cola and you'd be like "thats my £3/$5 down the drain"

The UVC lamp would be only good for the "sanitisation" session where you remove all shelves and content for the process. But for general use for UV sanitisation, we could try using a UVA or Insect O Cuter grade lamp in. These emit a long wave UV which will do some effective sanitation to the fridge and food whereas not causing plastic packaging to disintergrate fast

The run time for a UVC light wouldn't need to be that long if you can sterilize water with a small UVC light like a steripen in 90 seconds the light in the fridge would only need to run for a couple of minutes a day, So your soda pop bottle would be fine unless you leave it in the fridge until well past the expiry date, and £3 / $5 a bottle that's a crime a 2 liter here is like $1 so 60 p, and if a UVC light really did cause issues you can get sodas in aluminum cans which are UVC safe, or be like me and drink water from the tap....