Photochemistry solar simulation

Forbes DP. Design limits and qualification issues for room-size solar simulators in a CLP environment. In Albini A, Fasani E, eds. Drugs Photochemistry and Photostability. Cambridge The Royal Society of Chemistry, 1998 288-294. 

Since actual terrestrial global and direct radiation are affected by so many variables, standard spectra have been developed which are based on the theoretical air mass attenuation affects on the solar constant. Those developed by the Committee Internationale d Eclairage (CIE) and ASTM International are most widely used. These are relatively low-resolution approximations and while suitable for general simulation such as visible appearance and infhu ed heating effects are often inadequate and inappropriate for use in photochemistry, particularly in the UV range, and fail to account for the non-homogeneous distribution of terrestrial solar radiation previously described. 

For photobiology and photochemistry studies the match of the simulators spectral power distribution (SPD) to terrestrial solar radiation, particularly in the UV, is critically important. 

---