Why LED’s make for a better Insect Light Trap (ILT)

LED ILTs vs fluorescents: 

Flies and other flying insects are a threat to businesses that need contamination-free environments, such as food handling or pharmaceutical businesses. They’re also a nuisance for businesses with  customer-facing areas, such as hotels and conference venues.

Every business needs an effective fly control solution that is suitable for their specific environment – whether that’s a large warehousing facility or a small café, and there are a range of factors to consider when choosing an insect light trap (ILT).

While traditional ILTs may be effective at killing flies, LED ILTs have equally, if not better, efficacy and they offer a host of other benefits, too, including sustainability and safety, just to mention a few.

Sustainability: 

1. Energy savings:

As everyone who has LED bulbs in their home knows, LED bulbs offer a significant energy saving over conventional light bulbs. This is also true for the conventional fluorescent bulbs used in ILTs.

A typical LED strip used in an ILT uses only 10 watts of power, compared to 60–90 watts for units with fluorescent tubes. In our own tests, we’ve found that a Lumnia ILT with Lumnia LED lamps can save up to 70% of power compared to equivalent traps with fluorescent tubes, and the carbon footprint is reduced by 62%.

LED lamps can also have variable light output by reducing the power, allowing for even greater energy savings than fluorescent tubes. It’s the contrast in light output with the surroundings that is important for attracting flies, so at night and in low light levels, the power and the output of the LED lamps can be reduced while still effectively attracting flies.

Lumnia units also have day and night modes to further reduce the consumption of power when they’re least needed, allowing businesses to save more and lower their environmental footprint.

2. Longer life:

The standard fluorescent tubes used in insect light traps only last for about one year before needing to be replaced. During that time, the output of UV light drops to only half of the original brightness.

LED lamps produce UV light for a minimum of three years and the brightness only drops to 70% of the original output. So not only do the LED lamps last three times longer than fluorescent tubes (saving on replacement costs), they also maintain a higher output of UV light over that period, thus staying effective for longer.

The UV output of LED lamps is about 80% greater than the conventional L3 fluorescent tubes used in ILTs. This means that even after three years of use the UV output of LEDs is equivalent to a new L3 fluorescent tube.

Safer:

1. No hazardous chemicals:

Fluorescent lamps require a number of hazardous chemicals in order to operate and are therefore a safety risk if mishandled. They contain low-pressure mercury vapour – which generates the light when an electric current passes through it – and other gases such as argon, xenon, neon or krypton to control this process.

The inside of the glass tube is coated with a fluorescent substance made from various metallic and rare earth phosphor salts to convert the UV light produced by the mercury into the desired wavelengths. The lamp also has tungsten electrodes that are coated with barium, strontium and calcium oxides to improve their function.

An LED lamp, on the other hand, has a tiny semiconductor wafer encased in plastic. Several of these are placed on a plastic or metal strip to create a lamp that is used in an ILT. There are no hazardous chemicals that can escape into the environment in normal use.

2. No glass:

A fluorescent tube consists of a fragile glass tube that contains the mercury vapour and the other components mentioned above. The glass tube can easily shatter if dropped or bumped, which would scatter the glass and the chemicals in the tube around the area in which food is handled.

LED lamps – by comparison – have no glass that can shatter and no hazardous chemicals that could be scattered in a food-handling area. In tests in which an LED ILT is dropped repeatedly, the lamps do not break, so they are perfectly safe for a food environment.

Attractiveness to flies:

The graph shows the sensitivity of the photoreceptors in a house fly’s eyes to different wavelengths of light. This shows that the fly’s photoreceptors are tuned to wavelengths around 350 nanometres, which is close to the UV output of the Lumnia LEDs (365 nm).

LED lamps produce intense light in the most sensitive part of the UV spectrum that flies can see. There is little UV light in indoor environments, therefore, the LED lamps will appear to the flies as bright sources of light and attract them to the unit.

Greater reach

The greater brightness of the LED lamps also means the ILT has a greater reach – the distance at which the light is bright enough to attract insects. In testing our Lumnia ILTs, the reach of the LED lamp strip was determined to be 80% greater (UV light measured in watts per square metre on a flat surface) than a traditional L3 fluorescent tube.

An LED lamp will attract flies and other insects at greater distances, which also means that in a large space, fewer units are required as they can be placed further apart. This saves costs for businesses threefold – in the number of ILTs, electricity costs and lamp replacement.

Hygiene:

With some electric traditional fly-traps, flies are zapped and their fragments can escape into the environment, leading to contamination risks in food-handling areas.

Lumnia units are designed to specifically overcome this by using powerful glue boards and an encapsulation module that captures flies and prevents the insect fragments from blowing out. These minimise the risk of cross-contamination, making fly-control more hygienic.

When compared to traditional fly-traps, Lumnia LED ILTs are not only just as or more effective, they’re more cost-effective, sustainable and hygienic. However, it’s the Lumnia range from Rentokil that boasts a greater reach and catches flies faster than any other LED ILT. And with their modern design, they’re aesthetically pleasing enough to go into front-of-house locations, too.

To find out more about our Lumnia range of LED ILTs, contact us today