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Lighting the dark is tough on the environment. It’s gotten better with light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs and compact fluorescents lights but can a light bulb get even more eco-friendly? A
The company’s Electron Stimulated Luminescence (ESL) lighting technology is neither incandescent nor fluorescent nor LED. The company’s chief marketing officer Ron Davis told Residential Lighting, an industry website last month, that its bulbs will be energy-efficient, mercury-free, totally nontoxic and household disposable. That’s good news for places that are getting strict regulations on light bulbs, especially those banning incandescents.
The new bulb will be fully dimmable with instant-on capability and should interface with existing lighting controls. Compact fluorescent lights (CFL) send currents through a mercury vapor and LEDs, such as EarthLEDs, use no mercury and create light by electrically stimulating a semiconductor material that emits UV light. Vu1 claims its ESL bulbs will create the same light quality as an incandescent but is more energy efficient and won’t use any neurotoxin mercury in the lighting process.
The company says its bulbs will be cleaner than CFLs, with its mercury and twisted shape, and greener than LEDs with their heavy heat dissipation. It does this by its patented technology of using accelerated electrons to stimulate phosphor to create light, making the surface of the bulb “glow” and thereby emit light.
Vu1 says it can use standard light bulb glass and will fit into class light bulb shapes familiar to consumers anywhere. It anticipates its mercury-free bulbs will be available sometime early next year and is pricing the bulbs at $12, which puts it on par with dimmable compact fluorescent lights. There’s no proof yet of how well ESLs work and until it comes on the market, we’ll remain in the dark on just how different this new light bulb is from LEDs and CFLs.
Via Residential Lighting, CleanTechnica, Vu1; Photo via laszlo
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written by EV, August 12, 2008
It does this by its patented technology of using accelerated electrons to stimulate phosphor to create light, making the surface of the bulb “glow” and thereby emit light.
This sounds exactly like how a CRT works. The electron tube accelerates electrons to excite phosphorus on the back of the screen. Perhaps they are using a vacuum tube to accelerate the electrons as in the days of old?
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written by Pook, August 12, 2008
"And : Since when do LEDs have "heavy heat dissipation" ?"
High power LED's run very hot & require significant heatsinks to stop them from burning up. These are LEDS like the ones from Lumileds from Philips they are not like the normal 3 or 5mm LED's
"ESL lighting technology is neither incandescent nor fluorescent"
Strictly speaking isn't it in fact fluroesent; not in the conventional CFL way admitedly......
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written by Andrew Leinonen, August 12, 2008
Even if I wantonly smashed every single CFL I bought at the end of it's life span, and every single molecule of mercury vapourized, I'd still be emitting less mercury than if I'd used incandescents, simply because the sheer volume of coal that was offset through its use is so dramatic.
(and that's not even an apples-to-apples comparison in the first place, since most of the mercury in CFLs becomes fixed to the inside of the glass and doesn't aerosolize even if improperly disposed of)
I'm in no way opposed to innovative technology, but from the standpoints of technical viability, reliability, environmental impact, cost and availability, I think CFLs are still tops.
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written by jake3988, September 10, 2008
As for Andrew, that's correct. The amount of mercury we save from coal burning power plants well outweighs the amount of mercury in a bulb (which is minute). I forget the numbers but it's well into the hundreds of pounds of mercury vapor released into the air by the coal plants of america.
I could understand not wanting to use them if you run your house on renewables, but if you get your electricity from coal definitely use them.
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I'm also surprised at their claim that they will be able to have this for sale by next year, seeing as don't seem to even have any data available on the prototypes yet.