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Nanotech Could Make Incandescent Light Bulbs As Efficient As LEDs (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: Thomas Edison would be pleased. Researchers have come up with a way to dramatically improve the efficiency of his signature invention, the incandescent light bulb. The approach uses nanoengineered mirrors to recycle much of the heat produced by the filament and convert it into additional visible light. The new-age incandescents are still far from a commercial product, but their efficiency is already nearly as good as commercial LED bulbs, while still maintaining a warm old-fashioned glow.
Lightbulb more important than recorded music??? NO WAY~!
I can't wait to get back to the days of changing each light bulb in my house a couple of times each year.
I though incans were banned now? Is anyone still using them??
Also of interest, will it blend?
The point of the point of the invention is to reflect the infrared light back at the filament, so the warmth should be pretty much absent if they succeed.
What's the lifetime of the new incandescent bulb? Do they still burn out as fast as they used to? Or does recycling the heat cause them to take longer to burn out. The major advantage I find in LEDs is that they last a long time. And with the plummeting prices (picked some up for $3.50 a piece at Walmart last week), It's going to be hard for incandescent bulbs to compete. If this was such a good solution, it could probably be used for LED lights as well, since they throw off a non-negligible amount of heat as well.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Interesting acheivement, though I wonder at any help for lifespan. I'd rather put in LED bulbs that will probably outlive the rest of the house...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Thomas Edison didn't invent the electric incandescent light bulb, he developed an electric incandescent light bulb.
Whats that you say about how great hemp is and how you cant get high off of it?
Thomas Edison would only be pleased if he got sole credit and a cut of the profits.
Oh man, that's a good point. Laws never get repealed or changed, so I guess all that research was for nothing.
They did legislate efficiencies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So if they can make an incandescent that meets those requirements, who cares. Now go make another grievously uninformed post.
Aside from questions of longevity, I honestly much prefer the availability of light color options that LEDs provide. After getting several LEDs that are substantially cooler in color than normally available incandescents/CFLs, I never want to go back. Add to that the fact that I can GET warmer colored LEDs if I desire, and the fact that I can use LED lights that package other abilities into their package (like wireless speakers), and I just don't see the consumer draw other than some rose colored glasses. (Maybe for dimmable bulbs, which I know LEDs struggled with for awhile but they seem to have overcome that also... This also ignores the brightness of the lightbulb, as LEDs have just generally been brighter [a good thing imo] than comparable incandescents and CFLs in my experience. Maybe the new tech solves that, but still probably not worth it as a consumer is my feeling.)
The question isn't just whether they'll be as efficient as LEDs. The question is whether they'll last as long and cost as little.
Frankly, for most people, what they liked about incandescents was their cost. I seriously doubt that anything that requires "nanoengineered mirrors" will cost $2.50 for a pack of 10.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
There are some crazy innovations happening in LED lighting. To the point where stock on shelves is becoming obsolete in a matter of months.
All white LEDs are essentially florescent lamps. - A blue-range LED excites a phosphor that makes white light. You can tune the phosphor mix to get whatever color range you want. "Warm" Led lights are completely indistinguishable from incandescent, and in may cases can be "Warmer"
So basically you have an emitter with a glob on tob.
In the past everyone was focusing on getting the emitter more powerful, and putting one or two in a light.
That approach is completely obsolete - Too much heat in a tiny space, extremely high drive current requiring more expensive power supplies, light comes from a single point source. (Single emitter is good for some applications but for home lighting its not great)
Now they've developed chip-on-glass techniques that lay down lots of tiny LEDs on a strip of glass which are all then wired in serries, then are covered in a soft polymer that contains the phosphor. The polymer both protects the chips and their wiring while providing a large surface area to emit white light.
The strip arrays are cheap to make (completely automated) and guess what happens when you power a bunch of strips in series (About 80-200 chips at a time)? You can drive it at like 60-100 volts. At that voltage the power supplies are CHEAP because you're only drawing a few hundred ma. Everything gets cheaper and more efficient.
Meet the new bulb. Same as the old bulb.
They could have legislated minimum efficiencies but NO
They DID legislate based on efficiency. The law states that future incandescents can come to market if they are more energy efficient. Wikipedia
I know OSRAM released a line of efficient dichroic halogen lamps in the late 90s. Previous lamps with dichroic reflectors would reflect visible light out the front and allow IR to pass through the back. OSRAM went one step further: the envelope around the filament was nearly spherical and coated on the inside with an IR dichroic filter that reflected the IR light back onto the filament. It did make the lamps much more efficient, but people didn't care much about efficiency back then and the lamps were more expensive to manufacture. I am not aware if ORSAM still produce this range.
Anyway, even if this idea isn't new, it is nice to see this tech evolving.
So let us give these guys a well deserved PhD or Masters as the case may be and move on...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The strip arrays are cheap to make (completely automated) and guess what happens when you power a bunch of strips in series (About 80-200 chips at a time)?
... you get massively reduced MTBF as now a single bond wire failure (quite common due to the die, substrate, wire and coating all having different coefficients of expansion) takes out your entire array.
LED not suitable in all environments, and incandescent still necessary for appliances. But will it have an impact on saving environment?
You can still buy them everywhere. The only difference is the wattage is lower and its a smaller halogen bulb inside the larger glass.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The right-wing blowhards on the radio will still complain about having to use them.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
In every case I know, you can still get the incandescents - they just can't be 'general use' bulbs. 40W appliance bulbs are still available for environments like your oven. Short of halogen bulbs(which are actually a variation on incandescent), no other lighting technology can withstand the heat well enough.
Otherwise, you'd have to get fancy with a light pipe or something in order to keep the light generator cool enough, and even then you might have problems during things like self-clean cycles. In the end, it's just not worth it, the light isn't on that much, and most of the time you're heating the inside with electricity anyways, so it's not like bulb efficiency really matters.
I don't read AC A human right
Posting as AC at work...
Maybe it's because I live at 1500 m above sea level, which makes the sunlight significantly more white than at sea level, I personally have always disliked the "warm glow" of incandescents. I don't understand why people would want a yellowish colored light that makes white walls appear beige and photographs appear a hideous yellow-orange. I've been very pleased with the cool white LED and cool white CFL lamps that I've bought, and I would never switch back to the dim, ugly yellow of an incandescent (I might go for some sort of HID or Xenon type lamp, though).
Also here's a question for everyone. Why is 1800K "warm" while 5000K is "cool". We should really work on the way we talk about colors. Blue is hotter than red, yet for some reason people associate blue with cold and red with hot. Why haven't we fixed this?
Since this is real science Edison wouldn't know anything about it.
He would however steal the idea, patent it and make money from it while the real inventor will die a poor man's death.
Edison should be known for the thief he was.
I for one like white light you see from tube light. May be it is our tradition and we have come to like it only because of it. Also tube lights are around 20% efficient, so still 3 times more than 6.6% they are getting from nano-tech. New TLED tube lights from Philips are around 30% efficient and are compatible with standard tube light fixtures.
Not all governments passed the same law.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
For, if each bulb with this technology is going to be significantly more expensive than current offerings, the technology will occupy, at best, a very small market niche.
Given the ignorance of the comment I assumed he was American.
while still maintaining a warm old-fashioned glow.
Is this old fashioned warm glow really better, or is it just more familiar? (much like the "warmer" sound from vacuum tube amplifiers that some people prefer)
I've used CFL's for over a decade, and started moving to LED's about 2 years ago, and I really have no problem with the LED light - I use "warm" 2700K LED's almost everywhere and they are fine. I still have a rarely used desk light with an incandescent, and I don't think it puts out any better light than the LED's.
Funny, the strip lights I've looked at don't have that failure mode. Additionally, they can be cut at regular small intervals along the strip, making for extremely flexible layouts.
> LED bulbs are superior to everything else, prove me wrong. (you can't)
They are, at this time, for most applications. (There's a reason "hard use" incandescents are still made.) But wait a few years, and LEDs will be "value engineered" down to crappy lifetimes just like CFLs were.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
LED bulb nerds should checkout bigclivedotcom's channel on YouTube. Where he does teardowns of LED light bulbs purchased on eBay and from his local "pound shop" and other assorted cheap Chinese crap.
Here he does a teardown on what sounds like your "chip-on-glass" LED bulb. He approves of it.
Just like those cheap Christmas light strings from years ago.
Except a lot more expensive.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
LED bulbs are superior to everything else, prove me wrong. (you can't)
The sun needs no electricity, it's free. (You lose)
My wife's theater group has a closet/shed just outside the house they use for their activities. In order to keep it reasonably warm and hence reasonably mildew-free, she collected a huge bunch of 100-watt incandescents and keeps one of them on 24/7 (which also increases bulb life because the bulb temperature stays pretty constant.) The electricity costs a bit, but having to replace mildewed period costumes would cost hella lot more.
The term "nanotechnology" was coined by Eric Drexler specifically to refer to technology that allows assembling things atom-by-atom. For some reason it now gets applied to any nanoscale engineering or nanomaterials.
To be fair, TFA calls it "nanoengineering," not "nanotech," so the fault lies with Slashdot's editors.
Actually, it _is_ good enough...
When I was a kid, our house still had the old gas lighting and fixtures; the newfangled electrical stuff was all separate, (With wiring exposed on the walls...).
Dad put a new Coleman Mantle on one of the gas fixtures, and lit it off. Once conditioned, it got very bright, for about a minute, and then just disappeared in a bright puff of Thorium Oxides. Apparently, Natural Gas Mantles were made differently than the techniques Coleman used for "White" Gas.
Even though Thorium was never outlawed for Mantle production, most companies like Coleman have recently switched to Rare Earths, like Yttrium.
Fun Fact- because the Mantles burn at such a high temperature, they are actually very efficient in the visual range, putting out much less Infrared than Incandescent bulbs.
From The Fine Article;
... ultimately improved the efficiency of the bulb to 6.6% ...
6.6% is 45 lumens per watt.
Pardon me while I yawn.
This tech might lead to something interesting, but so far, not so much.
The commercially available Cree soft white 4-flow A19 bulb is 12% or 82 lumens per watt.
There are LED modules for sale that are over 200 lumens per watt.
In the lab, 303 lumens per watt (44%) has been achieved.
Where have you found a strip light that has 80-200 LEDs in series (hint: that's somewhere around 240V - 600V forward voltage for blue/white LEDs) using COB/COG construction?
He didn't invent the light bulb, and he didn't invent that, either.
He and his team invented a long-lived, high-impedance, incandescent lamp that could be wired in parallel --
as well as developing a complete and commercially viable system for safely electrifying your home our shop. Including the training of a new generation of electricians.
State the government which passed the law which does fit the description, then cite the law.
This is good news for those guys at sideshows who eat light bulbs: I can't see how the new LED bulbs could possibly be as tasty or nutritious.
Because he is dead and will not be able to falsely claim credit for it's invention. http://www.cracked.com/article...
So basically keep buying incandescents for the time being; in a few years LEDs will be sorted and cheap and we'll just use those, skipping crappy CFLs that don't work in the cold and disperse mercury into the environment.
Fine with me.
LED bulbs are superior to everything else, prove me wrong. (you can't)
I put an LED bulb in my Lava Lamp. Now the goo just sits there on the bottom.
Have gnu, will travel.
So this will be as big a success as etching ordinary bulb filaments with a laser,which also was meant to make old "ordinary" bulbs much more efficient,but seems to have Totaly failed to ever appear anywhere. Bulb stories are like the next battery tech,none of which ever seem to make it as far as the shops shelves,one a week..
Why would anyone prefer warm yellow light? That was a byproduct of incandescent light, not a design choice. I for one hate the way it made everything look dirty and yellow. Give me white light (3500-4000K) any time.
I mean, by the time you've gotten your infrared reflector photonic crystal tungsten ribbon rectangular emitter Rube Goldberg thing perfected, it's bound to be a lot more expensive than current incandescent bulbs, and probably more expensive than LED bulbs. Plus, it is still working by getting a thin piece of metal hot enough to glow brightly. That inevitably means limited lifespan.
Personally, I buy cheap LED bulbs when I see them on sale, and I haven't had one fail yet. Other than the older silicone-rubber-over-glass Cree bulb which I dropped. It still works fine, actually, but with electrically 'hot' bits exposed, I'm not running it.
I don't know from spectrum, but I got a lot of pushback on installing CFLs. This has not been an issue with the LEDs I've gotten; they seem to have a good WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) whatever their "spectrum" might be.
The big problem with LEDs might turn out to be they just don't die. Once everyone has replaced every bulb with an LED, who's going to be buying bulbs?
What I'm wanting to see is more fixtures that are built with LEDs, rather than assuming people are going to have to replace bulbs constantly.
No, California classifies any light with an Edison socket as low-efficiency, not matter what bulb you put in. They're banned in kitchens completely, and only allowable if you put in a dimmer switch that will damage some high-efficiency lights that would otherwise work in an Edison socket.
A similar method was reported here back in 2002.
It would be good to have a light source that gives a full, even spectrum again.
As others have commented here, I also wonder about the longevity.
I believe that current incandescent bulbs fail mostly as a result of heat. These new bulbs, if they do run cooler would need to be designed with a completely different impedance model, since traditional incandescent bulbs run a delicate balance using heat and the resulting impedance to maintain some kind of equilibrium. This is why they most often fail immediately after being switched on - the bulb is cool (low resistance) so for a brief moment there is a large amount of current flowing through the filament before it heats up enough to reduce the current to a safer level. If that spike happens to coincide with a peak of the AC waveform then the filament, already weakened by many heating/cooling cycles, stands a good chance of burning out.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Isn't this just like an HIR headlight bulb? it reflected IR back to further heat the filament and increase light output without increasing wattage.
On a related subject, I've often wondered if the inside surface of the anode of a vacuum tube could have a reflective coating to direct radiated IR back to the cathode and so reduce the power needed to maintain it's temperature. Somewhat late with this idea of course.
I absolutely hate LEDs and Florescent bulbs. The biggest issue for me is that I can pretty much always see the "flicker" (especially in LEDs). In all of my multi-bulb lamps I take a hybrid approach, which helps a lot. For example, a 3-bulb ceiling lamp will get 2 LED or Florescent Bulbs, plus a standard incandescent bulb. The workshop gets 2 x 200w (equivalent lumens) florescent bulbs plus 2 60w incandescent bulbs, for balanced light. Works very well for me and seems like a good compromise between efficiency and quality of light. With high-effeciency incandescent bulbs life would be simpler...
Check your facts.
If you remember back to your thermodynamics class, you might recall a thought experiment known as Maxwell's Demon.
The operation of this mirror seems suspiciously like a Maxwell Demon for photons which although on the margin might help, seems like it will eventually heat the system (in this case the filament) enough to be counterproductive in the end (e.g., burn out the filament).
Might an interesting short-term manufacturing/engineering breakthrough, though to get a little more efficiency out of incandescents, but how a nano-tech hack to shape black-body radiation could ultimately be better than a nano-tech hack to make an emitter directly emit the desired spectrum is hard to see.
Yet LED technology is nowhere near addressing the shitty color reproduction you get from objects lit by LEDs because these light sources continue to have a very uneven spectrum: http://i.stack.imgur.com/lkyXG.... Incandescents, on the other hand, have a blackbody spectrum which is smooth and thus easy to filter. There are incandescents targeted to photographers, galleries, and museums that match the sun's spectrum almost exactly (at your chosen whitepoint color temperature -- human perception of color is not absolute but depends on overall intensity of the light, so typical indoors lighting scenarios you want a lower color temperature because the light intensity is nowhere near solar and matching solar will make things seem too blue): https://www.solux.net/images/s...
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
If this was such a good solution, it could probably be used for LED lights as well
No. Incandescent filaments have to be hot to produce light, but with its entirely different mechanism, reflecting infrared back onto a light-emitting diode will not help it produce more light. Heat is NOT good for the diode. LED bulb designs actively do the opposite of these nanomirrors: they transfer heat away from the diode. (You may have noticed the fins on some LED bulbs. Their purpose is to radiate heat and keep the diode cooler.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Although the retailer claimed that my bulbs have a "warm" light with about the same color temperature as incandescent, I still notice that they throw a distinct bluish cast into the room. For me, it's not a very comfortable light.
They are "dimmable," too, but their "dynamic range" -- the spread between maximum and minimum brightness -- is not nearly as good as incandescents.
I will wait for a few more years of improvements before giving LEDs another chance.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
That's California. The link said the federal standard is based on efficiency.
No, California classifies any light with an Edison socket as low-efficiency, not matter what bulb you put in. They're banned in kitchens completely, and only allowable if you put in a dimmer switch that will damage some high-efficiency lights that would otherwise work in an Edison socket.
You keep saying this, but I cannot find anything to support that idea. This mentions only efficiency requirements, not socket type:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
As does this: http://www.ledsmagazine.com/ar...
If in fact you can provide me with a reference to this supposed ban on kitchen edison sockets I would be interested to see it.
Oh I spoke too soon - I found some. This is a reference that seems to support your statement: http://www.title24express.com/...
"According to the Title 24 energy standards a high efficacy luminaire contains only high efficacy lamps or high efficacy LED lighting, and must not contain a socket which allows any low efficacy lighting system to be used. For example, any luminaire containing a medium screw base socket is classified as low efficacy, regardless of the type of lamp installed into that socket. Typically, high efficacy luminaires contain pin-based sockets, like compact fluorescent or linear fluorescent lamp sockets, though other socket types such as screw sockets specifically rated only for high intensity discharge lamps (like metal halide lamps) light emitting diode (LED) luminaires (dedicated LED lighting fixtures that cannot use incandescent or any other type of lighting technology) may also qualify as high efficacy."
It does seem like a bit of almost pointless legislation since low efficiency bulbs can be found for various pin-based socket systems.
LEDs are now $3.40/bulb.
If you are still buying incandescents at this point. . . I doubt you will ever switch from incandescents or trade-in your horse and buggy, for that matter. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
This is why I have trouble giving much weight to those warning about an LED rebound effect. I read somewhere that the authors of a paper on the LED rebound effect had to push out their prediction date (from 2015 to 2030).
:p
The thing is, in 15 years we will be replacing old LEDs (which get around ~80 lumens/watt) with new LED technology (theoretically, ~300 lumens/watt). The impact will probably be comparable to replacing incandescent bulbs with LEDs today.
I suppose in 30 years we will just have engineered our eyes to work flawlessly without any artificial lighting . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Search for "filament bulb" on amazon.com. There are many vendors, of which my favorite is VCE. Yes, they're designed for 110V/60Hz.
Each "filament", made of 25-28LEDs in series, will require80-85V only (most LEDs are white, but some are red), which means that 110V, rectified and filtered, is more than adequate to power them (these bulbs use a linear current regulator to drop the excess voltage).
BTW, their efficiency beats the crap out of the 1W-type CREE LEDs, with numbers like 125-130lm/W measured in the lab at my place of work.
And I take it - it is not full of mercury so when you break one, you must call in men in hazmat suits. Sounds like a step in the right direction!
Ever tried an LED lamp in an oven?
Your point is valid, but the hand-drawn spectrogram you cite is well out of date. This is closer to the state of commercial art. http://www.designingwithleds.com/review-hands-cree-linear-led-t8-fluorescent-replacement-lamp/
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Given the ignorance of your comments I have to assume you're not an American.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Don't you realize they're talking about two different things?
One is talking about lamps which have strings of tiny LEDs for "filaments". These LED lamps are particularly popular with people who like the look of traditional incandescent bulbs. Something like this.
The other is talking about LED strips. These are typically sold in 5m lengths, with 30 or 60 individual LEDs per meter. There are different fixed colors and also RGB strips with alternating red, green and blue LEDs or red, green and blue in each multicolor chip package. The most popular type uses 5050 size LEDs (5mm by 5mm). These LED strips typically wire three LEDs in series with a resistor to get the right current at 12V, so you can cut them after each group of three LEDs.
Thomas Edison would be pleased, except he didn't originate the incandescent light-bulb. That honor goes to Swan, who sued Edison and as part of the settlement the light-bulb was sold under the Ediswan moniker. ref ref
They don't "look" right, and if you have more than one batch in a room you end up with this weird pastel disco lighting - pinks, greens, blues, yellows. I paid a good bit extra for 95CRI lamps for my kitchen and they are nearly indistinguishable from the 50W PARs they replaced t full power (dimmed is another story). I wouldn't mind CFLs so much but their CRI is generally 82 for the best, and in the 70s or lower for most economy brands.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
i endorse big clive.
just as several other of "his" inventions. He was more into mass-manufacturing and sucking other people dry of their true genius and output, Tesla, who was actually a real genius and inventor, being the most famous example. Edison was not much more than what has become so typical of Americans and American business.
I love the Cree LED bulbs......5000K seems to be the sweet spot for me.
True white light but not too far removed from the soft 2700K glow of incandescents.
As others have said, the yellow glow makes everything look dingy in comparison to some nice white light
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
I assume you're more geeky than your wife, in which case do her a favour and buy a cheap heater and thermostat. Or install a electrically heated towel radiator (on a thermostat). Or one of those IR lamps used for keeping chicks alive in hen houses.
EOM
Have you seen, how jagged actually is the spectrum of these? Or 97 being so close to 100 is enough for you?
You should look into the little temp rating on the side - CFLS and LEDS have a little warm to cool rating - choose the warmest one and it is pretty much impossible to tell the difference in the CFLs (LEDs look good bat the directional shape can throw off) we have both cfl and some older incandescent bulbs in the house and you can't tell the difference.
There you are. Title 24.
We already have efficient LED bulbs, and they last 50,000 hours. Why spend big bucks to develop fragile, expensive, nano-incandescent bulbs that burn out in only hundreds of hours ? Sounds like a wasted research budget in search of a problem.
CRI is only guaranteed to 90 according to the SPEC sheet http://api.icentera.com/v2/get...
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Right. Put a space heater in a closet stuffed full of flammable cloth. The light bulb serves two purposes in one easily-maintained unit. 1. Lighting. 2. Heat.
And the bulb is never near a costume.
Have a look at this