Posted on 06/02/2009 9:19:08 AM PDT by Freeport
New approach offers more pleasant light of traditional bulbs without the energy guilt
Thanks to a bit of ingenuity, Chunlei Guo, associate professor of optics at the University of Rochester, and his assistant Anatoliy Vorobyev have been able to squeeze out fluorescent-like energy performance from an incandescent light bulb. The breakthrough boils down to a laser treatment of the bulb's tungsten filament, a processing step which could one day become a standard in the light bulb industry.
Traditionally, incandescent light bulbs provide more pleasant light, however they lack the efficiency of fluorescent designs. The new bulb offers the brightness and color of a 100 watt incandescent bulb while using less than 60 watts.
The key is to blast the tungsten filament with an ultra-fast, ultra-powerful laser, which creates beneficial nanostructures on the metal's surface. Describes Professor Guo, "We've been experimenting with the way ultra-fast lasers change metals, and we wondered what would happen if we trained the laser on a filament. We fired the laser beam right through the glass of the bulb and altered a small area on the filament. When we lit the bulb, we could actually see this one patch was clearly brighter than the rest of the filament, but there was no change in the bulb's energy usage."
The pulse lasts a mere femtosecond, and delivers as much power as the entire grid of North America into a needle point size spot. Serendipitously, this strange treatment yields nanostructures and microstructures which turn a low-wattage incandescent light bulb into a high brightness one, while preserving its energy sipping character.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytech.com ...
too bad they are now illegal.....................
What I am looking for, and haven't found, is what the TOTAL WATTAGE of the laser blast is. We know it is very quick, and we know it is VERY powerful.
But if power/time turns out to be greater than the power saved by the treatment, it won't be useful.
You are kidding right?
At the same time the first thing that popped into my head was I wonder how soon the feds will ban them. We can’t have anything get in the way of driving energy costs through the roof!
“guilt” ??
Anyone who feels guilty about a light bulb is a DIM BULB!
Yeah, it won’t do us any good (as you say), now that they are illegal... LOL...
Them’s the breaks.
Good Question, glad you asked and made me look.
http://homerepair.about.com/od/electricalrepair/ss/2007_energybill.htm
QUESTION:
Are the manufacturing and/or the importing of incandescent
light bulbs going to be illegal starting in 2012?
ANSWER: “Yes” and “No”.
Unless groundbreaking new High Efficiency Incandescent (HEI) technology emerges as GE promises by 2010, the answer is “yes” for general use 100 Watt incandescents in 2012, and “yes” for 75 and 60 Watt bulbs by 2014, but “no” for many types of other incandescent bulbs even after 2014.
More info:
Exempt Incandescent Light Bulbs
One major point of consumer confusion is the misconception that all existing incandescent bulbs will go away in 2012.
CFL’s do not have the versatility of incandescents and as a result, there are many types of incandescent bulbs exempt from the law. CFL’s are limited in their range of applications. They have bulky shapes, require dry, non-enclosed fixtures, can burn out in months instead of the years advertised, are of large size and are unable to withstand vibration or impact and take up to 3 minutes to reach operating brightness.
The following incandescent bulbs are exempt from the phased law requiring 30% increase in “general service incandescent lamp” efficiency by 2012:
(ii) EXCLUSIONS- The term `general service incandescent lamp’ does not include the following incandescent lamps:
1.(I) Appliance lamp (e.g. refrigerator or oven light)
2.(II) Black light lamp.
3.(III) Bug lamp.
4.(IV) Colored lamp.
5.(V) Infrared lamp.
6.(VI) Left-hand thread lamp.
7.(VII) Marine lamp.
8.(VIII) Marine signal service lamp.
9.(IX) Mine service lamp.
10.(X) Plant light lamp.
11.(XI) Reflector lamp.
12.(XII) Rough service lamp.
13.(XIII) Shatter-resistant lamp (including a shatter-proof lamp and a shatter-protected lamp).
14.(XIV) Sign service lamp.
15.(XV) Silver bowl lamp.
16.(XVI) Showcase lamp.
17.(XVII) 3-way incandescent lamp.
18.(XVIII) Traffic signal lamp.
19.(XIX) Vibration service lamp.
20.(XX) Globe shaped “G” lamp (as defined in ANSI C78.20-2003 and C79.1-2002 with a diameter of 5 inches or more.
21.(XXI) T shape lamp (as defined in ANSI C78.20-2003 and C79.1-2002) and that uses not more than 40 watts or has a length of more than 10 inches.
22.(XXII) A B, BA, CA, F, G16-1/2, G-25, G30, S, or M-14 lamp (as defined in ANSI C79.1-2002 and ANSI C78.20-2003) of 40 watts or less.
23.(XXIII) Candelabra incandescent and other lights not having a medium Edison screw base.
The article never says the new bulb operates at 40 watts. It says ‘less than 60 watts’. Still neat they can do it, but what you are saying was not said in the article.
I would also hope they do some testing on these bulbs to determine lifetime operating ranges for it. They just altered the filament structure blasting it with a high energy laser - hopefully it doesn’t shorten the life of the bulb, or weaken the filament to where it breaks to easily.
Amazing what the free can come up with
This has to be one of the most poorly written sentences I have ever read. So what did they do - suspend the delivery of all power to all consumers in North America for a femtosecond to accomplish this technological feat? Calling Nicola Telsa!
Interesting. If this is true, and I hope it is, it will be ignored by the mainstream media and the democrats because it would invalidate the stupid law they passed that bans incandescent bulbs. (The law that was NEVER reported on ANYWHERE in the mainstream media)
Quite correct. I misplaced the reference. Still, after only a single pulse, the drop was 40 W for a brighter bulb! No, it’s no panecia, like what does the lasing do to bulb life, but the amount of energy used to create the effect, compared to the cost of a CFB and it’s hazardous materials, is so trivial as to not even make it into background noise.
Can you imagine what can be accomplished with the entire filament treated this way? And the process can be added onto the end of any existing line!
Too late. The good light bulbs are already slated to be banned and they won’t be coming back without a company making and selling them on the black market or a revolution.
I agree with you, it at least does appear very promising. I hope the additional testing they will do will show it doesn’t reduce the life or increase fragility of the filament, this would be great.
And it also would result in bulbs because they use less energy, less energy wasted as heat. So keep the old regular bulbs for the easy-bake oven, but use the new ones in your lights and waste less energy to heat, at the same time producing the same amount of light. Sounds good to me.
Screw em!
Yeah..., if you can find any to do it... LOL...
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