Ozone vacuum-ultraviolet (VUV) ozone generators, employ a light source that generates a narrow-band ultraviolet light, a subset of that produced by the Sun. The Sun's UV sustains the ozone layer in the stratosphere of Earth. UV ozone generators use ambient air for ozone production, no air prep systems are used (air dryer or oxygen concentrator), therefore these generators tend to be less expensive. However UV ozone generators usually produce ozone with a concentration of about 0.5% or lower which limits the potential ozone production rate. Another disadvantage of this method is that it requires the ambient air (oxygen) to be exposed
Ozone nm, extending well out into the NIR, are the Chappius and Wulf bands. There, unstructured absorption bands are useful for detecting high ambient concentrations of ozone, but are so weak that they do not have much practical effect. There are additional absorption bands in the far UV, which increase slowly from 200 nm down to reaching a maximum at ~120 nm. The standard way to express total ozone levels (the amount of ozone in a given vertical column) in the atmosphere is by using Dobson units. Point measurements are reported as mole fractions in nmol/mol (parts per billion, ppb) or