Types of Lighting technologies

Atul Anand Jha Gaurav Dixit B.Arch.-II (B)

Incandescent light bulb

The incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe produces light by heating a filament wire to a high temperature until it glows. The hot filament is protected from oxidation in the air with a glass enclosure that is filled with inert gas or evacuated. The light bulb is supplied with electrical current by feed-through terminals or wires embedded in the glass. Most bulbs are used in a socket which provides mechanical support and electrical connections. Incandescent bulbs are manufactured in a wide range of sizes, light output, and voltage ratings, from 1.5 volts to about 300 volts. They require no external regulating equipment, have low manufacturing costs, and work equally well on either alternating current or direct current. As a result, the incandescent lamp is widely used in household and commercial lighting, for portable lighting such as table lamps, car headlamps, and flashlights, and for decorative and advertising lighting. Some applications of the incandescent bulb use the heat generated by the filament, such as incubators, brooding boxes for poultry, heat lights for reptile-tanks.

Halogen lamp
A halogen lamp, also known as a tungsten halogen lamp, is an incandescent lamp with a tungsten filament contained within an inert gas and a small amount of a halogen such as iodine or bromine. The combination of the halogen gas and the tungsten filament produces a chemical reaction known as a halogen cycle which increases the lifetime of the filament and prevents darkening of the bulb by redepositing tungsten from the inside of the bulb back onto the filament. Because of this, a halogen lamp can be operated at a higher temperature than a standard gas-filled lamp of similar power and operating life. The tungsten filament in a halogen lamp is enclosed inside a much smaller quartz envelope. Because the envelope is so close to the filament, it would melt if it were made from glass.

The higher operating temperature results in light of a higher color temperature. This, in turn, gives it a higher luminous efficacy (1030 lm/W). Because of their smaller size, halogen lamps can advantageously be used with optical systems that are more efficient in how they cast emitted light.

Arc lamp
"Arc lamp" or "arc light" is the general term for a class of lamps that produce light by an electric arc (also called a voltaic arc). The lamp consists of two electrodes, first made from carbon but typically made today of tungsten, which are separated by a gas. The type of lamp is often named by the gas contained in the bulb; including neon, argon,xenon, krypton, sodium, metal halide, and mercury, or by the type of electrode as in carbon-arc lamps. The common fluorescent lamp is actually a low-pressure mercury arc lamp The electric arc in an arc lamp consists of gas, which is initially ionized by a high voltage and therefore becomes electrically conductive. To start an arc lamp, a very high voltage is pulsed across the lamp to "ignite" or "strike" the arc across the gas. The colour of the light emitted by the lamp changes as its electrical characteristics change with temperature and time. Lightning is a similar principle where the atmosphere is ionized by the high potential difference (voltage) between earth and storm clouds.

Efficacy

80 lumen/Watt 1A 2

Metal-halide lamp

Color rendering index

Color temperature: 3000 6000 K Metal-halide lamps, a member of the high-intensity discharge (HID) family of lamps (which produces light by means of an electric arc between tungsten electrodes housed inside a translucent or transparent fused quartz or fused alumina arc tube.), produce high light output for their size, making them a compact, powerful, and efficient light source. By adding rare earth metal salts to the mercury vapor lamp, improved luminous efficacy and light color is obtained. Originally created in the late 1960s for industrial use, metal-halide lamps are now available in numerous sizes and configurations for commercial and residential applications. Like most HID lamps, metal halide lamps operate under high pressure and temperature, and require special fixtures to operate safely. Since the lamp is small compared to a fluorescent or incandescent lamp of the same light level, relatively small reflective luminaires can be used to direct the light for different applications (flood lighting outdoors, or lighting for warehouses or industrial buildings). Metal halide lamps are used both for general lighting purposes, and for very specific applications which require specific UV or blue-frequency light. Due to their wide spectrum, they are used for indoor growing applications, in athletic facilities and are quite popular with reef aquarists, who need a high intensity light source for their corals. Since a metal halide lamp contains gases at a significant high pressure, failure of the arc tube, is inevitably a violent event. If the fixture has no secondary containment (e.g. a lens, bowl or shield) then the extremely hot pieces of debris will fall down onto people and property below the light. A typical lamp lasts from 6000-20,000 hours.

Mercury-vapor lamp
A mercury-vapor lamp is a gas discharge lamp that uses an electric arc through vaporized mercury to produce light. The arc discharge is generally confined to a small fused quartz arc tube mounted within a larger borosilicate glass bulb. The outer bulb may be clear or coated with a phosphor; in either case, the outer bulb provides thermal insulation, protection from the ultraviolet radiation the light produces, and a convenient mounting for the fused quartz arc tube. Mercury vapor lamps (and their relatives) are more energy efficient than incandescent and most fluorescent lights, with luminous efficacies of 35 to 65 lumens/watt. Their other advantages are a long bulb lifetime in the range of 24,000 hours and a high intensity, clear white light output. For these reasons, they are used for large area overhead lighting, such as in factories, warehouses, and sports arenas as well as for streetlights Clear mercury lamps produce white light with a bluish-green tint due to mercury's combination of spectral lines. This is not flattering to human skin color, so such lamps are not used in retail stores. "Color corrected" mercury bulbs overcome this problem with a phosphor on the inside of the outer bulb that emits white light. They offer better color rendition than the more efficient high or low-pressure sodium vapor lamps. Lamp life: 16000 24000 hours

Sodium-vapor lamp
A sodium vapor lamp is a gas discharge lamp that uses sodium in an excited state to produce light. There are two varieties of such lamps: low pressure and high pressure. Because sodium vapor lamps cause less light pollution than mercuryvapor lamps, many cities that have large astronomical observatories employ them. Low-pressure sodium (LPS) lamps have a borosilicate glass gas discharge tube (arc tube) containing solid sodium, small amount of neon, and argon gas in a Penning mixture to start the gas discharge. The discharge tube may be linear (SLI lamp) or U-shaped. When the lamp is turned on it emits a dim red/pink light to warm the sodium metal and within a few minutes it turns into the common bright yellow as the sodium metal vaporizes. These lamps produce a virtually monochromatic light averaging a 589.3 nm wavelength (actually two dominant spectral lines very close together at 589.0 and 589.6 nm). As a result, the colors of illuminated objects are not easily distinguished because they are seen almost entirely by their reflection of this narrow bandwidth yellow light. LPS lamps are the most efficient electrically powered light source when measured for photopic lighting conditionsup to 200 lm/W, primarily because the output is light at a wavelength near the peak sensitivity of the human eye High-pressure sodium (HPS) lamps are smaller and contain additional elements such as mercury, and produce a dark pink glow when first struck, and a pinkish orange light when warmed. Some bulbs also briefly produce a pure to bluish white light in between. This is probably from the mercury glowing before the sodium is completely warmed. The sodium D-line is the main source of light from the HPS lamp, and it is extremely pressure broadened by the high sodium pressures in the lamp; because of this broadening and the emissions from mercury, colors of objects under these lamps can be distinguished. This leads them to be used in areas where good color rendering is important, or desired.

HIGH PRESSURE SODIUM BULB OTHER DETAILS Consist of: ballast, high- voltage electronic starter, ceramic arc tube, xenon gas filling, sodium, mercury No starting electrodes High efficacy: 60 80 lumen/Watt Color rendering index: 1 - 2 Lamp life < 24,000 hrs

Fluorescent lamp
A fluorescent lamp or fluorescent tube is a gas-discharge lamp that uses electricity to excite mercury vapor. The excited mercury atoms produce short-wave ultraviolet light that then causes a phosphor to fluoresce, producing visible light. Lower energy cost typically offsets the higher initial cost of the lamp. The lamp fixture is more costly because it requires a ballast to regulate the current through the lamp. While larger fluorescent lamps have been mostly used in commercial or institutional buildings, the compact fluorescent lamp is now available in the same popular sizes as incandescent and is used as an energy-saving alternative in homes.

The fundamental means for conversion of electrical energy into radiant energy in a fluorescent lamp relies on inelastic scattering of electrons. An incident electron collides with an atom in the gas. If the free electron has enough kinetic energy, it transfers energy to the atom's outer electron, causing that electron to temporarily jump up to a higher energy level. This higher energy state is unstable, and the atom will emit an ultraviolet photon as the atom's electron reverts to a lower, more stable, energy level. Most of the photons that are released from the mercury atoms have wavelengths in the ultraviolet (UV) region of the spectrum, not visible to the human eye, so they must be converted into visible light. This is done by making use of fluorescence. Ultraviolet photons are absorbed by lamp's interior fluorescent coating, causing a similar energy jump, then drop, with emission of a further photon. The chemicals that make up the phosphor are chosen so that these emitted photons are at wavelengths visible to the human eye

Light-emitting diode
A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor light source. LEDs are used as indicator lamps in many devices and are increasingly used for other lighting. Introduced as a practical electronic component in 1962, early LEDs emitted low-intensity red light, but modern versions are available across the visible, ultraviolet, and infrared wavelengths, with very high brightness. When a light-emitting diode is forward-biased (switched on), electrons are able to recombine with electron holes within the device, releasing energy in the form of photons. This effect is called electroluminescence and the color of the light (corresponding to the energy of the photon) is determined by the energy gap of the semiconductor. LEDs are often small in area (less than 1 mm2), and integrated optical components may be used to shape its radiation pattern. LEDs present many advantages over incandescent light sources including lower energy consumption, longer lifetime, improved robustness, smaller size, and faster switching. LEDs powerful enough for room lighting are relatively expensive and require more precise current and heat management than compact fluorescent lamp sources of comparable output. Light-emitting diodes are used in applications as diverse as aviation lighting, automotive lighting, advertising, general lighting, and traffic signals.