Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Common uses:
lamps both outdoor and indoor, backlight for LCD displays, decorative lighting
and signs, both high bay and small area general lighting. Not used for lighting
from afar due to diffused nature of the light.
-Energy efficient, so far the best light for interior lighting
Advantages -Low production cost (of tubes, not of the ballasts)
-Long life of tubes
-Good selection of desired color temperature (cool whites to warm whites)
-Diffused Light (good for general, even lighting, reducing harsh shadows)
-Flicker of the high frequency can be irritating to humans (eye strain, headaches,
migraines)
-Flicker of common fluorescent light looks poor on video, and creates an ugly greenish
or yellow hue on camera
-Diffused Light (not good when you need a focused beam such as in a headlight or
Disadvantagesflashlight)
-Poorly/cheaply designed ballasts can create radio interference that disturbs other
electronics
-Poorly/cheaply designed ballasts can create fires when they overheat
-There is a small amount of mercury in the tubes
-Irritating flicker at the end of the life cycle
Statistics
-CRI 74-90
-Color Temperature - comes
in all variations, 5600 K for
normal indoor applications
-46 - 105 lumens per watt
-Lamp life: 10,000 - 45,000
hours (does not take into
account ballast life)
How it works:
Step by step explanation of a standard 4 foot long 40 watt straight tube lamps
(this is the most popular size of fluorescent lamp in the world since the
1940s).
Note: There are two kinds of ballasts, the magnetic ballast which uses copper coils (transformers), and
the electronic ballast. Electronic ballasts are favored today because they use a lot less material and are
lower cost to produce.
1.) AC electric current passes through the ballast. The ballast will step up 120
AC volts (in the US) to 216 V, next the power passed through a 'choke' or
'reactor', this limits current and prevents the lamp from creating a type of short
circuit which would destroy the lamp. All arc discharge lamps need a choke to
limit current.
2.) The lamp's glass tube is called a discharge tube and it works by having
electrons pass from one electrode to the other. This forms what is called an
"arc". Getting this started is a real challenge.
To get the lamp started you need a spike of high voltage to get the arc
started. The colder the lamp is, the higher voltage you need to get a start. The
voltage 'forces' current through the argon gas. Gas has a resistance, the
colder the gas, the higher the resistance, therefore you need a higher voltage
with colder temperatures. Since creating a high voltage is a challenge and
dangerous, engineers figured out ways to 'preheat' the lamp, that way less of
a high voltage is required. There are different ways to start a lamp
including: preheat, instant start, rapid start, quick start, semi-resonant start
and programmed start. We will tell you about the main two ways to make it
start.
2a. Use a Starter (startswitch) - This method is the first and arguably the
most reliable type of way to start a lamp according to some. Many facilities still
have older fixtures with startingswitch preheat fluorescents.
1.) In the early systems the starter contained a small neon or argon lamp.
When the starter was cool at first, current ran through the starterswitch
through the neon lamp. The 1 W lamp would warm a bimetallic strip in the
starter, while in the main arc tube the current passed through the tungsten
electrodes which would make them heat up and ionize some of the gas. This
'preheated' the lamp.
2.) Current passes through the tungsten electrodes on each end of the lamp.
The electrodes are like a filament on an incandescent lamp, when current
passes through they heat up and give off free electrons. This process of
letting off free electrons is called thermionic emission. The free electrons
ionize the argon gas in the tube. The first gas to be ionized is right around the
filament, you can see it clearly in the photo above. An ionized gas is called a
plasma.
3.) When the starter switch (with the little neon or argon lamp inside) gets
warm enough, the bimetallic strip flips the other way, completes the circuit,
bypassing the small lamp. The lamp goes out and the entire circuit shorts.
During the short the voltage falls to zero. The bimetallic strip cools and pops
back open, opening the circuit. In the ballast the transformer had a magnetic
field, when the circuit is cut the magnetic field collapses and forms an
'inductive kick' from the ballast. Suddenly this kick of high voltage is sent
through the lamp and this starts the arc. If it didn't work, if the lamp is still too
cold, then the starter switch will light again and repeat the process.
2b. Rapid Start - This modern type of starting method constantly preheats the
electrode (cathode) using low voltage AC power. The arc is started by passing
through a grounded reflector or starting strip on the outside of the glass tube.
The arc starts between the electrode and the starting strip first and rapidly
propagates through the entire discharge tube. The schematic for this and
other modern start methods is much more complex.
3.) So now your arc has started and current passes from your cathode to
your anode (electrode to electrode) through the argon gas. Because your
dealing with AC power, the cathode switches back and forth. AC power is
good for the lamp because if the lamp was DC, the cathode side would be
brighter and more intense since there are more free electrons spewing off of
the tungsten electrode there. Also if the lamp was on DC power, the electrode
which is acting as the cathode would become weaker as it lost tungsten atoms
and the lamp would not last as long. Since we use AC the electrons or ions
break off one side, reach the other, then on the next cycle are sent back. Also
the lamp tube has a nice uniform brightness on both ends.
Powdered phosphors on the inside of the tube absorb the UV light. Here you can see the UV light as a
purplish light. The quartz lamp used in this experiment is the same as a compact fluorescent lamp except
that it has no phosphor.
4.) Vaporizing mercury and making light: The normal fluorescent lamp has
a small amount of mercury in the tube. On a cold tube you would see it as a
couple of pinhead sized dots if you were to break the tube so you can see
inside. The arc which started in argon gas quickly warms up the mercury liquid
stuck to the side of the tube. The mercury boils or vaporizes into the arc
stream. The arc easily passes through vaporized mercury. This creates UV
light. That light is emitted and strikes the phosphors on the inside of the glass
tube. The phosphors convert the light into useful visible light.
Phosphors are chemically designed to give off a certain color. Here you see a warm white at 3000 Kelvin
(color temperature) and cool white which is closer to daylight at 6000 Kelvin
1. Filament electrodes are preheated and glow red
2. The Cathode begins to ionize argon gas surrounding it
3. This lamp is powered by AC power, so the cathode switches to the other side and you see the left side
begin to ionize, the other side (now the anode) stays warm and ionized
4. The left side cathode warms to full and both sides are warmed up
5. The ballast provides a high voltage kick which instantly ionizes the entire tube to a high level of
brightness
6. The lamp returns to normal voltage and its warmth has vaporized all the mercury, the lamp operates as
normal
Why does electricity flow through the gas? In a solid metal wire electrons jump
freely from atom to atom, while the atoms stand stationary. In a gas there are also free
electrons "jumping" their way from the negative electrode to the positive at the other
side. What is different is that you also have ions moving as well.
What is an ion? An ion is an atom with positive or negative charge. If an atom has one
extra, or one less electron than normal, it will have a + or - charge. In an ionized gas the
negative ions will flow/move towards the positive electrode.
How do you get gas ionized? Normally you could not send current through a gas, but
if you introduce free electrons and ions into the glass tube you can ionize the gas. This
is done by have a filament electrode, current heats up the filament which boils off
electrons into the tube, this ionizes the gas
Ballasts
Watch the video above to learn the basics about different types of ballasts.
Ballasts are a fascinating part of the fluorescent lamp system due to the
complex nature of resistance, inductance and reactance. There are two kinds
of ballasts: the magnetic ballast, and the electronic ballast.
Magnetic Ballasts: magnetic ballasts use transformers to convert and control
electricity. Understanding the ballast takes some background because it uses
the complex property of induction The ballast raises voltage, but the most
important thing is that is limits current.
Why do we need
a ballast?
As current forms
an arc through the
lamp, it ionizes a
higher percent of
gas molecules.
The more
molecules are
ionized, the lower
the resistance of
the gas. We know
that no resistance
will equal a short.
So without the
ballast to control
the current,
current would rise
so high that the
lamp would melt
and destroy itself.
The transformer which is called a "choke" in a ballast is a coil of wire called an inductor.
It creates a magnetic field. The more current you put through, the bigger the magnetic
field, however the larger magnetic field opposes change in current flow. This slows the
current growth. Since we are dealing with AC power, the current flows in one direction
for only 1/60th or 1/50th of a second, then drops to zero before flowing in the opposite
direction. Therefore the transformer only has to slow current flow for a moment.
The Cold Cathode device was not born as a light source. It is an evacuated
tube filled with gas with an electrode at each end. The earliest cold cathode
tubes included the Geissler tube (1857) which was used for science and
entertainment (provided an amusing glow depending on the gas within). Over
the years cold cathode tubes were developed to perform a variety of functions
including counting, voltage regulation, radio detection, phase angle control in
AC, computer memory, radio frequency transmission, high voltage control
switches, and more. Early devices were called: the Geissler Tube, Plucker
Tube, Cathode Ray Tube, thyratron, krytron, and dekatron.
Neon Lamps and Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps (CCFLs) create light as
their primary function. Neon Lamp is a term describing lamps with a tube
smaller than 15 mm in diameter.
Applications of CCFLs:
-Back lighting for LCD screens
-Computer monitors (tube)
-Television Screens (LCD, CRT)
-Alcove lighting and background diffused indirect lighting
-Nixie Tubes - early form of numeric display, they are small glass tubes
shaped as numbers, activated by a wire mesh anode and multiple cathodes,
replaced by LEDs in the 1970s
Advantages
Disadvantages
BACK TO TOP
2. Design
Variations
Right: A giant compact
fluorescent along with a U-
shaped configuration, "twisty"
bulb CFLs, Circline, and other
shapes. All of these variations
are on display at the Edison
Tech Center in Schenectady,
New York. Contact us for
public hours. See the video
below: History of Consumer
Fluorescent Lamps where
Rick DeLair shows us the
various designs along with
years and companies. (Hot
Cathode Lamps)
BACK TO TOP
Below: our YouTube video highlighting the inventors and their contributions:
1856 - Heinrich Geissler was the first to extensively study the arc
tube. His Geissler tube was the foundations for all arc discharge
lamps including HID lamps
Bonn, Germany
The internet has permitted growth of myths about many technologies due to
web authors using unsupported facts from dubious websites. As you can see
from the list above Nikola Tesla and Agapito Flores did not invent the
fluorescent lamp. Many poorly researched internet sources will claim they did.
Most of these sources are "content farms" which pump out online articles with
less than one hours work on the part of the author. This means no proper
research was done. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone and therefore is also
prone to inaccuracies created by fanatics of Tesla and Flores. Read more
about the Flores and Tesla issue here: "Who Invented the Fluorescent
Lamp?"
BACK TO TOP
Development Timeline:
Early History: the invention was developed one part at time over many years.
1901 - Use of mercury vapor arc to create UV light (critical to lighting up the modern fluorescent)
and use of a ballast with the lamp:
Peter Cooper Hewitt developed the first commercial mercury vapor lamp. While some had experimented
with using mercury vapor in Germany and England, Hewitt's design was able to produce a bright high
quality light with a wide enough spectrum of emitted light to be usable. This lamp produced UV rays which
would turn out to be useful later on. A ballast was located above the lamp to create a reliable, controlled
power source. New York, New York
1970s - In the 1970's it was found that a diameter of 38 mm gave the greatest efficiency. The 40 W
1200 mm x 38 mm lamp became the most used lamp in commercial/industrial buildings.
1980s - John Anderson advances the fluorescent lamp by improving the electrodes, inventing a
dimmable fluorescent lamp
BACK TO TOP