ESL — a CRT-Based Replacement For CFL Lights Without the Mercury

New submitter An dochasac writes "Everyone knows incandescent lights are inefficient little space heaters which happen to convert 5% of their incoming energy to light. Compact Fluorescents (CFLs) are more efficient, but they contain toxic, brain-eating mercury and emit a greenish light. LEDs are also efficient and last longer, but if their blueish 'white' light doesn't mess up your melatonin balance, their price is high enough to wreck your checking account balance and give you the blues. A company called Vu1 has come up with something called Electron Stimulated Luminance (ESL) lights which claim to solve the mercury and price problem with a light based on Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) technology. These lights have the warm color balance of incandescents and are compatible with dimmer switches. The article has further ESL details along with an explanation of why it's still a bad idea to say these are 'trash can safe.'"

Comments

It only took a century

[i kan reed]

But we're finally trying to improve the lightbulb again. Thanks, energy crisis.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

People have been trying to improve the lightbulb ever since it was invented. They have, so far, been unsuccessful, which is why they had to lobby the government to get rid of traditional incandescent lightbulbs, so that they could sell the "improved" bulbs they had developed.
If they had actually improved on the traditional incandescent, they would not need to have a law passed in order to displace it, people would have switched. Do people need to have laws passed against old computers to get people to buy new ones?

Re:It only took a century

[Kenja]

The LED bulbs I'm using sure seem to be an improvement. But perhaps you're using some metric other then price, quality, efficiency or environmental impact.

Re:It only took a century

[Anonymous Coward]

... perhaps you're using some metric other then price, quality, efficiency or environmental impact.

Yes. Quality of the light (not quality of the physical bulb).

Re:It only took a century

[DanTheStone]

But perhaps you're using some metric other then price, quality, efficiency or environmental impact.

Maybe he wants to use them in his easy-bake oven.

Re:It only took a century

[cpu6502]

Well put.

I know I would never buy another CFL if it wasn't for Congress forcing me too (because they outlawed incandescents). CFLs are the perfect example of an "improved" product that is actually worse than what it is replacing. Kinda like Windows 8 or Vista.

And I suspect if anybody did a study, they'd find CFLs actually use more energy & increase the carbon footprint more than incandescents, because of the extra energy needed to ship them from China & then drive the dead CFL to a recycling center to dispose of the hazardous mercury. It would be similar to how the ACEEE's study showed EVs are no cleaner than a 45mpg gasoline vehicle (and less clean than a natural gas Civic or 88mpg Lupo TDI).

Re:It only took a century

[green1]

Price: LED $27.98, Incandescent $0.43 (Comparison of 60w incandescent vs 9w LED (approximately same brightness) at local home depot store)
Efficiency: 9w vs 60w, that's an improvement.
quality: very little ever goes wrong with incandescent bulbs, they work until they eventually burn out, often many years later. LEDs theoretically last longer, but there is a lot more that can go wrong with them, and I've seen many reports of individual LEDs within the arrays not working, or annoying flickers developing etc. Quality may be a wash, but it certainly isn't something I would easily award to the LED side.
Environmental impact... this is really hard to tell, sure the LED uses less electricity, but there is a LOT more involved in the manufacture as well including various components that are not exactly great environmentally. Additionally they are generally manufactured overseas and not locally as Incandescent bulbs are, so there's the shipping impact to add in to that as well. and when it comes to disposal, incandescents are just glass and metal, LED bulbs leave a bit more of a question as to their environmental impact.

Now for the bad news. I also can't give you usability. Sure they work just fine in standard fixtures, however they don't work in a couple of extremely common applications. 1) oven lights 2) microwave lights 3) enclosed fixtures (apparently the electronics can't handle the heat they generate) 4) dimmers (sure they CLAIM to dim, but I have never found any type of bulb other than incandescent that actually does, and I've tried quite a few)

Incandescent bulbs have 2 huge drawbacks, lifespan and efficiency. But they have everything else going for them. So far those 2 drawbacks are the only thing any of the replacements do have going for them, at the expense of all the others.

People want an improved light bulb, they just haven't seen one yet.

Re:It only took a century

[mhajicek]

Do you have an affordable 100 Watt equivalent LED bulb that fits in the physical envelope of a 100 Watt incandescent? I haven't seen one.

Re:It only took a century

[uigrad_2000]

The CFLs don't seem to flicker as bad as the old ones, but they're still annoying.

The ESLs are already on the market, and have been since December. This article seems rather late.

Re:It only took a century

[Hatta]

SAD is ameliorated by blue wavelengths. Heat lamps radiate near the red end of the spectrum. Heat lamps are really just the poor mans sauna.

Re:It only took a century

[Hatta]

But perhaps you're using some metric

Spectrum.

Re:It only took a century

[PRMan]

I got the cheapo LEDs at Home Depot and they dim just great.

Re:It only took a century

[Electricity Likes Me]

And I suspect if anybody did a study, they'd find CFLs actually use more energy & increase the carbon footprint more than incandescents, because of the extra energy needed to ship them from China & then drive the dead CFL to a recycling center to dispose of the hazardous mercury.

As opposed to...the energy needed to ship incandescents from China, then drive them in garbage trucks to a landfill site?

It would be similar to how the ACEEE's study showed EVs are no cleaner than a 45mpg gasoline vehicle (and less clean than a natural gas Civic or 88mpg Lupo TDI).

Which completely ignores the fact that electricity is independent of it's energy source, whereas natural gas, diesel and petrol are all fossil fuels which can't be easily substituted.

Re:It only took a century

[HiThere]

He may be saying that, but it probably isn't correct.

OTOH, the amount of possible improvement is probably minimal, and would likely come at the cost of considerable increase in complexity. E.g., you could, if you wanted, construct a bulb based around a hot filament where the filament would need to run significantly hotter, and the resulting UV radiation was captured by a secondary emitter. Unfortunately, this is just in inefficient version of a fluorescent bulb. But it *should* have less flicker, and by adjusting the secondary emitters you could select the wavelengths you wanted the light to produce.

So, technically, it's quite possible to improve the incandescent bulb, for certain meanings of incandescent and improve. Most simpler changes which have more wide spread agreement that they constitute improvement, have already been made. Using tungsten filaments, e.g., and vacuum filled bulbs are examples of agreed upon improvements. An inner bulb filled with an inert gas surrounded by an exterior bulb filled with vacuum is another possible improvement. But probably not worth the cost. (The bulbs would be more expensive, and the only advantage is the bulbs wouldn't dim from evaporating filament depositing on the glass.)

IOW, you can't expect much, if any, improvement in filament bulbs, because the improvements would increase the cost with minimal improvement in bulb characteristics, or they would drasticly increase the cost with at best insufficient improvement in the characteristics of the bulb.

Re:It only took a century

[Electricity Likes Me]

Halogens don't improve on the physics of an incandescent though. The luminous efficiency improvements are due to the fact that the halogen cycle lets you run the lamp hotter, which pushes more of the peak of the black body emitter to where you want it. It's still, fundamentally, a black body emitter.

Re:It only took a century

[raygundan]

Incandescents are not outlawed. Efficiency standards were set, and met, by improved incandescents. You can buy them (and have been able to since at least 2008, when I bought my first) at Home Depot (and probably other places) under the Philips Halogena Energy Saver brand name (and probably others here as well).

Re:It only took a century

[hb253]

Did the law specifically outlaw incandescents? I don't think so. As I understand it, the law mandates higher efficiency. And you know what? I can now buy incandescents that put out more lumens per watt than previous generaiton bulbs. In my house I use each type of bulb as is appropriate. Philips Halogena for the kitchen floodlights, Philips higher efficiency incandescents in the bathroom, CFL's in most table lamps, and one LED bulb to try on one high use table lamp.

Your semi-rant smells of mindless talking point repetition.

Re:It only took a century

[Technician]

FYI, they work great in microwave ovens. They are located outside the cavity and survive the short duty cycle better than any other bulb. The location is fan cooled. An LED bulb in this use will see low run hours due to intermittent use so a 2000 - 6000 hr LED will typically outlast the magnetron which has a typical 1000 hour life. The mid base 16 Chip LED bulb made for fan lights fits most microwave ovens directly.

Re:It only took a century

[Smidge204]

Increasing energy efficiency lowers energy costs (and makes systems less susceptible to changes in costs), reduces infrastructure requirements (lower costs, more reliable), lowers barriers to entry, makes sustainability possible, increases productivity (more work per unit energy), and allows increasing density of technology.

Laptops and iPhones would be impossible with people like you at the helm, because "throw more watts at it" does not lend itself to miniaturization too well.

We can (and should!) still work on fusion energy, meanwhile increasing efficiency across the board will reap more immediate benefits for everyone at every level of society. Ever observe a bacteria colony in a petri dish? The colony grows and grows, consuming more and more, until they run out of resources... then the entire colony dies. I'd like to think we're smarter than bacteria and can at least recognize the consequences of consuming without regard to this planet's limits.
=Smidge=

Re:It only took a century

[mattack2]

OK, how about if I live optimally and dump my sewage on your lawn?

Re:It only took a century

[djh101010]

100 watt incandescent light bulbs are a buck each. How much was your Philips LED bulb, and, does it put out as much light as a 100W incandescent? If so, please provide the part number, because I can't find one that even comes close, for any price.

Re:It only took a century

[NFN_NLN]

That one was White (6000-6500K), but they sell a selection of color temperatures from 2,000K up to 20,000K.

Apparently the 20kK lights are ideal for aquarium plants..

Re:It only took a century

[dbIII]

Did the law specifically outlaw incandescents? I don't think so. As I understand it

In some places it did as a sort of "green theatre" pushed though by governments that prefer an easy stick to fair legislation - for example the bill pushed through by Malcolm Turnbull of Australia's former "conservative" coalition. Thus no lights in ovens at all instead of the sensible approach of the best thing for the job.

Re:It only took a century

[Omestes]

The phillips are covered with an orange filter. I've tinted some of my other LED bulbs with water color orange markers and gotten a weaker similar improvement in color.

Am I the only person who likes cool light? All of the CFLs in our house are the "Daylight" variety. My office is mostly lit with white LEDs (my desk lamp is full spectrum), and a "Daylight" CFL. The only room where we still have standard warm "bulbs" (CFLs) is the dining room and kitchen since white renders food a bit oddly. I don't get the attraction to simulated torchlight, which was originally supposed to be simulated sunlight, but we, obviously, lacked the technology.

The "daylight" type bulbs don't render skin-tones badly, like standard fluorescents, and doesn't add the nasty greenish cast that old CFLs did.

Also, whats up with the Church of the Holy Incandescent Light Bulb? Why are people so attached to them? We haven't bought one in years, outside of our old bathroom fixtures, and haven't ever missed them.

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

You know what? Those bulbs were available before the government mandated higher efficiency. Of course, very few people were willing to buy them because of how much more they cost than traditional incandescent lightbulbs.

Re:It only took a century

[advocate_one]

In Europe they are outlawed... rather than do the right thing and insist on a minimum efficiency standard, they just banned the higher wattage incandescents first and basically rammed CFLs down our throats... I strongly suspect some kickbacks from the CFL manufacturers helped this... Same thing happened with catalytic convertors for autos... the technology was mandated rather than a standard set for emissions that could be met by any tech that could get there... again, someone with connections had positioned themselves to corner the market for Platinum... Catalytic convertors are useless for most short journeys as they haven't got up to operating temperature by the time the journey is completed...

Re:It only took a century

[Attila Dimedici]

And of course now you are going to have to continue to experiment with various bulbs and, in some cases fixtures, until you can find some combination that meets your needs. All because some people decided they knew better than you what you need and what was best for you.*


*this post is not aimed at the poster I am replying to as much as it is aimed at those who think that this government intervention in the market is a good thing (or any government intervention).

wiki link

[vlm]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_stimulated_luminescence

Slashdot needs a copy of the wiki alertbox: "This article appears to be written like an advertisement".

"Light is generated instantly when power is applied." So how are they doing the thermionic emission of electrons... cold cathode which I thought had serious amps/meter limits, or ?

Re:wiki link

[uberdilligaff]

They meant to say "...for sufficiently large values of instantly"

Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[sehlat]

There are still good uses for incandescents, particularly in environments where the heat is a major benefit.

As an example, my wife's theater group has a detached wooden shed which is used to store costumes, wigs, etc. She keeps a 60-watt light bulb burning in that shed to keep the place warm enough that condensation and mildew aren't a problem. Since the bulb hangs in open space from the ceiling, it's a lot safer and much more efficient than any space heater, and it's also cost effective, since, as noted, it keeps mildew down.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[Millennium]

And don't forget the lava lamps.

Please, won't someone think of the lava lamps?

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget traffic lights. In cities up north that have replaced their traffic lights with LED units they are having problems with the lights getting obscured by snow and ice. The old incandescent bulbs kept the temperature up and melted the snow,

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[DragonWriter]

There are still good uses for incandescents, particularly in environments where the heat is a major benefit.

As an example, my wife's theater group has a detached wooden shed which is used to store costumes, wigs, etc. She keeps a 60-watt light bulb burning in that shed to keep the place warm enough that condensation and mildew aren't a problem. Since the bulb hangs in open space from the ceiling, it's a lot safer and much more efficient than any space heater,

Neither lightbulbs nor space heaters are particularly ideal as dehumidifiers, which is really what you want to prevent condensation and mildew.

Re:Efficiency Depends On What You're Effishing For

[X0563511]

They could put tiny electric heating elements inside there to keep them warm and still end up with a more efficient system.

Finally!

[Guppy06]

A light bulb with no "native resolution!"

LED FUD?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get LEDs in any color balance you want now, including very warm color balances. For example:
http://www.cree.com/products/xlamp_mtg.asp

And price is falling fast:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitz's_Law

The lighting industry is rapidly gearing up for a complete transition to LED lighting.

The melatonin study? The comparison point is high pressure sodium, which produces very yellow light. I'd be surprised if there is anything specific to LEDs as compared to any other light with decent Color Rendering Index, other than that they are efficient enough to be a candidate to replace High Pressure Sodium.

Re:LED FUD?

[jittles]

I just bought a bunch of LED bulbs this weekend at Costco. They have coupons right now. They were about $3 a bulb, and I think they put out great light. At an estimated $0.30 a year in operating cost, I think I'll keep them!

Huh

[RoboRay]

I just discovered a use for that old CRT monitor buried in my closet!

Warm white? Yuck!

[Anonymous Coward]

I go out of my way to find daylight or cool-white bulbs. I have been living with cool white for over 10 years and when I see a regular incandescent bulb outputting that putrid yellow color, I cringe. It is awful. This is the year 2012. Why do we still want our artificial light to be the same color of candles used back in the stupid ages?

I hate CFLs

[cpu6502]

LEDs are about ~$30 on amazon. They've dropped about half what they were two years ago, so not really that expensive (they last a lifetime). I'm tempted to buy one sometime.

CFLs:
- are dim for the first 4-5 minutes, so you have to sit and wait before you can read your book (or walk down the basement steps)
- filled with mercury
- have to drive the burned-out ones to the landfill (thus increasing carbon footprint) (and no I don't CFL or battery recycling where I live)
- have to ship them in from China (again increasing the carbon footprint)
- they don't last long in my fixtures because they are upside down (trapped heat kills CFL electronics)
- or startup when outside (subfreezing temps)
- and every dimmable CFL I've ever tried went "zzztt" and died within an hour.

I wish the incandescent bulbs were still available. They didn't use as much power as the CFLs do (I'm including the power to ship from China & drive them to the landfill). Or frustrate me. Or require special handling. And they were built here on this continent (close to market).

Re:I hate CFLs

[hankwang]

[incandescent bulbs] didn't use as much power as the CFLs do (I'm including the power to ship from China & drive them to the landfill).

One 12 W CFL, equivalent with 60 W incandescent, over 5000 hours: electricity savings = 225 kWh = 800 MJ electrical energy = 2 GJ heat of combustion in a power plant.

Equivalent car fuel @ 35 MJ/liter: 57 liters (15 gallons). How far do you live from the landfill?

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

4-5 minutes? You're smoking some serious grass or something.

Re:I hate CFLs

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to slashdot where exaggeration of negative myths about green tech are pretty much par for the course. CFL's are satan's work. Electric cars are worse than gasoline cars. Solar power is doomed. Etc.

Re:I hate CFLs

[rahvin112]

You have atrocious power quality if you are only getting 1100 hours. I bought my home 8 years ago and promptly replaced almost every bulb with CFL's. I've yet to replace one, yet the one major fixture I have that still has incandescents has been replaced 4 times at about $6 a pop (decorative bulbs). In fact I have one CFL light that's on nearly every minute we are in the room and still going strong 8 years later (god knows how many hours, wouldn't be surprised if it's upwards of 10,000 hours at this point).

So I say again, you have really crappy power thats killing bulbs or you are buying the cheapest POS you can buy and using it as some comparison test. Based on your post I sincerely doubt you've purchased or used a quality CFL for any real use.

Re:I hate CFLs

[nickersonm]

I also have yet to replace a single CFL bulb from the set I installed 6 years ago. I just used generic Costco CFLs that were something like $2-4 apiece.

Re:I hate CFLs

[camperdave]

Remember when light bulbs were instant on and televisions had to warm up?

My Philips CFLs are instant on.

Incandescents are 100% efficient heaters

[Namarrgon]

At least if you pull down the blinds. But then, so are all other electrical heaters, and indeed pretty much most electrical equipment. Light, and all other radiated energy, all ends up as heat in the end. The only difference is how a heater distributes the heat, and and how convenient that process is.

Reverse-cycle air conditioners are an exception, as they're heat pumps, not radiators.

Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[Geoffrey.landis]

But we're finally trying to improve the lightbulb again. Thanks, energy crisis.

I'm not sure that they know what they're talking about when they say the "bluish 'white' light" of LEDs. Maybe five years ago white LEDs had a blue tint, but these days you can buy consumer LED bulbs in about any color temperature you like, including the "warm" light indistinguishable from incandescents.

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[Geoffrey.landis]

So? Compared to sunlight, incandescents make some pigments look funky.

If the spectrum isn't identical to sunlight, any light bulb will render some colors differently.

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[crath]

...silly and ignorant ideas in the article about the color of various light technologies...

Fluorescent lights and LED lights can be manufactured in any color desired; it's simply a matter of choosing the correct phosphors. The fact that lamp manufacturers don't bother to manufacture lamps in a particular color(s) has nothing to do with ESL being any better or worse than other technologies.

Re:Warm LEDs [Re:It only took a century]

[Geoffrey.landis]

Have you ever tried to distinguish navy from black under incandescent? Pretty hard, isn't it. But walk outside and it's obvious. Ever seen an alexandrite ring? Nice green color in daylight. Funny it's yellow-orange under incandescent.

Incandescent lamps shift colors.

ahem...

[damn_registrars]

Didn't CRTs have to use leaded glass to prevent the users from being bathed in X-Rays?

RTFA

The shadow mask stopped some electrons, converting their energy to X rays. To filter these, old TV screens were made of thick leaded glass

Math check...

[damn_registrars]

From TFA:

Canada's $0.25 per pound e-waste charge

Canada has used the metric system for decades (switching back around the time the US said they would switch as well). Why would they charge per pound for electronic waste?

fail: 30 lumens per watt

[madbavarian]

Their ads claim that it has similar efficiency to a CFL, but that is far from true for the CFL's one finds at Home Depot or similar.

The company's VU1 is 600 Lumens and uses 19.5 watts. (ref: http://www.jetsongreen.com/2011/11/vu1-esl-r30-light-bulb-lowes.html ) This comes out to 30 Lumens per watt.

A typical under $4 CFL from home depot puts out 1500 Lumens using 23 watts for 65 Lumens per watt or more than twice as much light for the same input power. (ref: http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100686995/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&keyword=100%20watt%20cfl&storeId=10051 )

Re:Warm color balance of incandescents? Really?

[shutdown -p now]

I'm not deeply familiar with the details of incandescent light development, but I was always under the impression that the big challenge was, you know, just making them work at all without burning out in a short time. Did they really work hard to find the optimal "warm color balance" before they were considered successful? I doubt it. I suspect that at the time the critics were going on about the harsh glare of the incandescent lamp and waxing poetic about the superior warm color balance of the candle flame.

They didn't need to work hard to find the optimal balance for incandescents, because it's inherent in their design - they're black body radiators, same as candle flame or sun, so they've got that nicely distributed spectrum that feels more "natural" to our eyes.

Mercury in Seafood-equivalents

[Guppy]

A couple years back, I wanted to get some perspective on just how much mercury is in a CFL. After looking up values for a typical CFL bulb, it turned out the entire mercury content of the bulb was equivalent to 4-5 pounds of swordfish.

Not sure if that's an endorsement for the safety of CFLs, or a warning to the effects of bio-accumulation on seafood.

What is the point of all this for us?

[Picardo85]

I can't really see the point at all in why we in the nordic countries would need to change at all ... its stupid as shit since we need to heat our homes 8 months of the year anyway.

So what if they incandescent light-bulbs only produce light from 5% of the energy used. The rest go to heat ... to heat our homes ... which we would have done anyway. The rest of the year we don't use lights indoor that much since we've 18-24h sunlight here anyway.

I recommend LEDs

[Sycraft-fu]

I am ditching all my CFLs when they die for LEDs. Home Depot sells a bunch of nice ones. They aren't too expensive, and they dim properly. Their Ecosmart ones are the ones I get for most of my lighting because I like the higher colour temperature. For my living room I like the Philips AmbientLED A19. It is a real replacement for a standard A19 bulb. Same size and everything. They call it 60 watt equivalent but I measure the light output to be equal to a GE Reveal 75 watt bulb. Has a "warm white" which I don't usually like but for dimmed TV watching light I like.

It's luminous efficiency if better than CFLs too.

We'll see how long they last but they are warrantied for like 7 years and given they are LEDs they ought to last for about 50,000 hours of continuous use.

Stoners to the Rescue!

[Niscenus]

You know what's high efficiency, has long term cost benefits and is environmentally friendly?
Sulfur Lamps!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_lamp

Best use, however, is piping the light, as installing them into a room comes with many annoyances, like communication interference and microwave ballast placement. However, I must admit, they have some great uses, and currently, nothing beats them for central lighting...they glow a Fusor Test-fire purple when they first get started; how awesome is that?