A Super-Efficient Light Bulb

Chroniton writes with news of a Silicon Valley company, Luxim, that has developed a tiny, full-spectrum light bulb, based on a plasma of argon gas, that gives off as much light as a streetlight while using less power. The Tic Tac-sized bulb operates at temperatures up to 6000K and produces 140 lumens/watt, almost ten times as efficient as standard incandescent lamps, and twice the efficiency of high-end LEDs. The new bulbs also have a lifetime of 20,000 hours. There's no mention of mercury or other heavy metals, which pose a problem for compact fluorescents.

Comments

Light pollution

[CRCulver]

gives off as much light as a streetlight while using less power.

Great, people lighting their properties with more bright lights is just what we need. Light pollution is already a serious probably (it's destroyed amateur astronmy, see Mizon's Light Pollution ). Instead of showing people how they can make do with less lights, we're just making it cheaper for private individuals to duplicate the Las Vegas strip.

Re:Light pollution

[merreborn]

gives off as much light as a streetlight while using less power.

Great, people lighting their properties with more bright lights is just what we need

I missed the part of TFA that said these bulbs were going to be available at prices low enough for home use.

What makes you think these aren't just going to be used to... replace streetlights? Halving the power usage of streetlights nationwide would reduce atmospheric pollution measurably. If the choice is between light pollution and atmospheric polution... ...light pollution is the more desirable of the two.

Re:Light pollution

[peragrin]

It is also easy to use shields, and angles to limit the amount of light going up, and only light up the areas that you need to. Besides reflects let you use a lower wattage and still light up the same area.

Re:Light pollution

[apoc.famine]

Actually, there is one major difficulty: Thermal expansion.

Commercial use

[Dan East]

Such high operating temperatures would not be acceptable for domestic use - the risk of fire would simply be too great. But commercial use, specifically for streetlights as the summary mentions, would be ideal. The amount of power consumed by streetlights world-wide must be staggering, so any improvement in efficiency, even in just this single area of light generation, would be substantial.

Re:Commercial use

[Geoffrey.landis]

Additionally, if it really generated that much heat, it couldn't possibly be as efficient as even the worst incandescents.

To the contrary. The eye's range of sensitivity is tuned to the solar spectrum, emitted at a blackbody temperature just a bit below 6000 K. A bulb is most efficient if it emits light in the spectrum that the eye is sensitive to, and not in, say the infrared spectrum. So a bulb emitting blackbody spectrum becomes more efficient as the emission temperature goes up, and peaks in efficiency at around 6000.

Incandescent bulbs are not inefficient because they are too hot-- they are inefficient because they are not hot enough. They run somewhere about 2500 or 3000, and hence most of the light is emitted in the infrared, not the visible.

Price?

[danaris]

So...how much does it cost compared to an incandescent? Or an LED?

Dan Aris

Things I want to know

[Nodamnnicknamesavial]

1. Scalability - will it scale for use in domestic lighting?

2. Color temperature - will it do warm white or something similarly pleasant?

3. Argon... isn't that toxic? (since the summary mentioned hazardous materials but didn't point that out, high school chem is so long ago..)

4. Price if none of the above are problematic

5. Time to market.

If someone can answer those, I'll be genuinely interested :)

God this shit here is worse than digg

[imsabbel]

A few points, inspired by those "insightful" comments i read till up to now
a) Temperature=!heat=!"OMG IT WILL KILL US!!!". You dont really want to know the "temperature" of the electron beam in your old style TV... (yeah, i know its not in thermodynamical equilibrium, and thus temperature is not defined, thus the "")
b) This is nothing really new. It is based on the same principle like the old sulfure-plasma lamps in the early 90s.
c) It doesnt scale down well. It needs its power provided by microwaves, which is not efficiently possible in the lower power range.
d) Yeah, it uses 250W. But provides as much light as a 1500W halogen thrower. Wake up, moms basement (which you are most familiar with) isnt the world, there are plenty of things you would like to have 10ks of lumens for.
e) Reinforced from d: Yeah, a 250W bulb can be energy efficent. Because it puts out a fucking lot light, numbnut.
f) Doesnt compare at all with leds: Leds have low surface brightness, are effiecent and dont scale UP well. This things have a very high surface brightness, are efficient and dont scape DOWN well. Apple, meet orange.
g) A better comparison would be vs HID: there they are supperior (longer lifetime, less dangerous, not much more complex driver (HIDs need a high-voltage ballast, too).

Re:Halving power usage of streetlights, easy.

[Mr. Freeman]

The reason we light up the street is because it prevents accidents. Yes, we could save power by turning off the streetlights, but that defeats the purpose of the streetlights, and results in more accidents.

Re:Beware - Parent post links to a virus

[Anonymous Coward]

I laughed at 2girls1cup, lold at beheadings, accidents, gore, vore, scat, etc. if something inside me has died, that was the weak part. I am retarded now.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Halving power usage of streetlights, easy.

[psychodelicacy]

Because our social structures have changed hugely in the last 50 years. Walking home from a friend's house at 1 a.m. is nothing unusual for me, or for lots of other people. But I wouldn't be able to do it if there weren't decent street lighting.