review · Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety
Conventional food processing techniques used to neutralise microbes often reduce product quality, generate potential carcinogens, and raise environmental concerns. Ultraviolet light-emitting diodes, known as UV-LEDs, offer an alternative non-thermal approach to disinfect water, liquids, and solid foods without these drawbacks. These systems can replace traditional UV lamps by deploying UVA, UVB, and UVC wavelengths individually or in tandem. Combining different wavelengths produces synergistic germicidal effects that help suppress the reactivation of microbial cells. Furthermore, integrating UV-LEDs into advanced oxidation processes delivers strong antimicrobial action whilst effectively breaking down micropollutants. Across the systems examined, UVC-LEDs demonstrate the strongest antimicrobial impact and provide the most effective decomposition of micropollutants. These findings highlight key design strategies for tailoring energy-efficient UV-LED configurations to satisfy stringent food and water safety standards.
Traditional food preservation methods can degrade nutritional value, alter taste, and create hazardous by-products. Non-thermal UV-LED technology offers an energy-efficient alternative that preserves food quality and safety while effectively disinfecting drinking water and degrading persistent chemical micropollutants.
This work informs the design and customisation of UV-LED disinfection hardware for food processors and water treatment facilities. The review indicates that while the operational mechanisms and synergistic multi-wavelength strategies are established at a research level, further engineering development is required to build practical, energy-efficient systems ready for commercial food and water safety operations.
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Conventional technologies for the inactivation of microorganisms in food products have their limitations, especially changes in quality attributes that have led to quality deterioration, low consumer acceptance, impact on the environment, and potential health hazards (carcinogens). Ultraviolet (UV) light is an emerging promising nonthermal technology employed for microbial inactivation in water, liquid, and solid food products to curtail the limitations above. This review provides an insight into UV light-emitting diodes (UV-LEDs)' potential as an alternative to the traditional UV lamps for microbial inactivation in liquid and solid media. Also, the mechanisms of inactivation of lone and combined UVA-, UVB-, and UVC-LEDs were discussed. The strategies utilized to improve the efficacy between the UV-LED treatments at various wavelengths were summarized. Combining different UV-LEDs treatments at different wavelengths have a synergistic effect and suppression of microbial cell reactivation. The UV-LED-based advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) also have high germicidal action against numerous microorganisms and are efficient for the degradation of micropollutants. Among the UV-LEDs discussed, UVC-LED has the most antimicrobial effect with the most efficient micropollutants decomposition with regards to UV-LED-based AOPs. This review has provided vital information for future application, development, and customization of UV-LED systems that can meet the food and water safety requirements and energy efficiency.
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DOI: 10.1111/1541-4337.12645
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