The lamp would be effective if you were able to quickly circulate the air in the room past the lamp.
The lamp would be effective if you were able to quickly circulate the air in the room past the lamp.
You're totally right that circulating the air is important though! Definitely don't use far-UV in totally still air. But you don't necessarily need a LOT of air movement to achieve "good" mixing. Often just an air-change or so of ventilation is enough--just think about what would happen if you started smoking indoors. The smoke would be ~everywhere pretty fast.
The oxygen absorption at 222nm is not significant however--it's enough to produce a bit of ozone (less than you'd get from just opening a window), but not enough to actually absorb a significant amount of radiation. 222nm lamps are generally less powerful than 254nm lamps anyway, but because 254nm is much less safe, those systems have to be deployed in ways that often reduce their efficacy--in special louvred fixtures that kill most of their output or in portable units/ducts that constrain their effectiveness.
222nm seems to be more effective per-photon at inactivating viruses than 254nm too: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c08675