Luxim wants to brighten your block with ultra-powerful plasma lightbulbs

Sure, we all enjoy a Tic Tac from time to time, but what if that minty Tic Tac were also able to generate the same amount of light as an industrial LED? You probably wouldn't want to ingest that, though according to the company Luxim -- known to us for its work in the A/V world -- you might want to stick it in a streetlight. Apparently, the company has created a micro-sized bulb that uses 250 watts of power, but outperforms a 400 watt LED. Gas inside the tiny bulb is electrified by a component called a puck, which heats the gas into plasma and produces light, allowing a sizable chunk of energy to become light rather than heat -- thus the ultra-bright performance. Inside the mint-sized bulb the gas reaches 6000-degrees Kelvin -- or about the surface temperature of the Sun -- producing 140 lumens per watt, or roughly ten times that of a standard lightbulb. Really, it's quite bright. Still, a Tic Tac would probably be more refreshing.

[Via CNET]

[Griz @ Mar 18th 2008 10:11AM]

There is no such thing as a "degree Kelvin". Just Kelvin...just sayin'.

[Wwhat @ Mar 19th 2008 12:41PM]

Degree: A stage in intensity or amount; the relative intensity, extent, or amount of a quality, attribute, or action.

Clearly kelvin is a scale, and so has degrees.

[Griz @ Mar 19th 2008 1:20PM]

The 13th General Conference on Weights and Measures changed the name from "degrees Kelvin" to simply "Kelvin". The "degree" was omitted to signify that this scale is not referenced to some arbitrary temperature (like the Fahrenheit or Celsius scales), but rather to an absolute temperature (absolute zero). And so, if you had taken a reputable chemistry or thermodynamics class and knew what you were actually talking about, you would know that there is, indeed, no such thing as "degrees Kelvin".

[Wwhat @ Mar 19th 2008 3:09PM]

I'm sorry but anything that is on a scale has degrees, perhaps they should have taken a class in languages?

[Tim @ Mar 18th 2008 10:14AM]

Sounds like it would make a great automotive headlight.

[tom @ Mar 18th 2008 10:18AM]

I don't wanna get black spotted after being beamed by those headlights. I absolutely hate those that turn on high beam on city street at night for no apparent reason and those soup up cars with white LED/xenon bulbs

[Flashpoint @ Mar 18th 2008 10:19AM]

This is basically the same way a H.I.D light for new luxury automobiles works.

Of course, the problem here is that these bulbs are ridiculously bright and can blind oncoming drivers unless the car also features an auto-dimmer - which senses oncoming cars and dims the beams to prevent blinding.

I would like to see Plasma and HID become the new standard because they are environmentaly friendly and conserve less power, but these damn things are just so bright the only practical uses right now are flashlights, work areas and automotives. You don't want these inside the house.

[squipple @ Mar 18th 2008 10:32AM]

Why couldn't they just make a bulb that would consume less wattage then? If a 250w bulb outperforms a 400w bulb, then it could be said that a 40w house bulb of this nature would only consume 25w. Now, keeping something in your house that gets as hot as the sun, that's another matter. :)

[Semantix @ Mar 18th 2008 12:26PM]

@ squipple

In case you're not being sarcastic... it's a pretty big leap to say that just because there is a 250W lamp, the same technology would work in 25W package.

And besides, there are already household lamps available that provide the lumen output of a 40W incandescent with a 10W lamp... compact fluorescent.

[mcheddadi @ Mar 18th 2008 10:47AM]

But does it work in my altima?

[wbielins @ Mar 18th 2008 11:18AM]

Great, just what we need more LIGHT pollution. We don't need more light bulbs if we just shielded them properly so that the light goes where it should. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pollution

[Jeff @ Mar 18th 2008 12:00PM]

outputting MORE light using LESS energy is a good thing.

...or do you have something against efficiency?

[grjohnston @ Mar 18th 2008 10:37PM]

@ Jeff

Efficiency's great and all, but reduction in energy use is also a way to help the environment.

Just saying.

[jon @ Mar 18th 2008 11:29AM]

i love misleading headlines. the lights that "your block" uses are gas discharge lamps, which are already very efficient-- 100-200 lumens per watt. these plasma lamps are not more efficient than current streetlights. what they offer is full-spectrum light at high efficiency. instead of that sickly orange light you get from sodium lamps, these give real white light.

[grjohnston @ Mar 18th 2008 10:42PM]

Exactly! The idea of electrifying gas to make light is by no means a new one. Consider neon lights! While added efficiency over LEDs is nice, the real benefit is the spectrum that's produced. And there's really no need to tout this as some new technology that's going to be even better than LEDs... 'cause it's not a new technology. If anything, it's just a new format war.

[Crayola @ Mar 18th 2008 11:53AM]

Betcha it needs hundreds of volts to kick start the ignition, I'll still put my money on LED/OLED as the lighting technology of tomorrowland.

[PhilxBefore @ Mar 18th 2008 12:34PM]

Very good point. However, streetlight usage of these bulbs would be more practical because streetlights are usually only turned on once. Depending on where you live and energy consumption, the streetlights are generally always on during the day/night to prevent thieves from stealing the cable, and also just for general safety.

If it was in your house you'd need a decent sized ballast to get it going like the waning flourescent tubes your offices.

[Harkonian @ Mar 18th 2008 12:25PM]

Erm...6000 Kelvin? The melting point of glass is 1996 Kelvin. Does anyone else see a problem with these numbers?

[Semantix @ Mar 18th 2008 12:35PM]

It's stated in strange way in the video, but I think they are referring to the correlated color temperature, not the actual measured temperature of the plasme. The light emitted from the lamp is the same color as a blackbody radiator at 6000K. Hence his comment about the light looking similar to the spectrum of sunlight.

[Wwhat @ Mar 19th 2008 12:35PM]

Those kind of bulbs use quartz not glass.

[Wwhat @ Mar 19th 2008 12:52PM]

Interesting note: that's why you should never touch halogen bulbs (also made from quartz) with your bare fingers, the pollution of your sweat/skin combined with the intense heat will start degradation of the material and create leakage and possibly a bubble on the bulb that can cause it to explode.

[JDawg @ Mar 18th 2008 12:31PM]

Efficiency is always good, but I hear what wbielins is saying. Hopefully people will not add more lights just because it's less expensive to do so. That would cancel out the new efficiency. I have to tell you, it really bothers me that I can't see the stars because of light pollution. If these were used for street lights, hopefully one new light would replace more than one old light and hopefully they'd be aimed down instead of the lights that light up the sky. You know those orange lights that make the entire sky brown? I hate that.

[lol @ Mar 18th 2008 12:34PM]

Yay, I turn on my plasma 6000k tic tac, and my TV reception goes out. Mini solar-flares ftw.

[Barry @ Mar 18th 2008 12:43PM]

"but outperforms a 400 watt LED. "

Did I pull miss that one? When did 400 watt LEDs come out?!

[Fergus Kane @ Mar 18th 2008 5:55PM]

Seconded. Never heard of a 400W LED. I've seen people get excited over a 5W LED.

[James @ Mar 18th 2008 4:12PM]

140 lumens per watt is not really that impressive. Fluorescent and HID lamps that have been out for decades exceed 80 lpw white light, and Cree recently announced a white LED producing 131 lpw.

What I'm curious about is the CRI. Historically, the light sources producing the most lumens per watt have less than impressive color rendering. Low pressure sodium can approach 200 lpw, but the CRI is *zero*, everything looks black & orange.

[Dean W. Armstrong @ Mar 19th 2008 12:13PM]

Not everything is black and orange--the one thing that will have a color in low-pressure sodium light is fluorescent red. Freaked me out the time I saw it happen.

[SuperDre @ Mar 18th 2008 4:45PM]

OMG, this might be the answer for replacing my very expensive UHP-bulb for my beamer (optoma H79).. I'm still looking for a replacement which doesn't costs as much and has a long lifespan..

[dude2341233 @ Mar 18th 2008 9:33PM]

Interesting, but the claim of efficiency is nothing. A regular 400W HPS light, the kind that lights up a warehouse, produces 114 lumens/watt(45k lumens). A 1000W HPS designed for plant lighting can produce 145lumens/watt (145k lumens). This bulb may be smaller, but some new kind of efficient they are not.

dude

[Wwhat @ Mar 19th 2008 12:36PM]

First it says:
"which heats the gas into plasma and produces light, allowing a sizable chunk of energy to become light rather than heat"
Then:
"Inside the mint-sized bulb the gas reaches 6000-degrees Kelvin -- or about the surface temperature of the Sun"

Those statements seem to conflict a bit.

[Wwhat @ Mar 19th 2008 12:46PM]

For those not following links and who find this interesting; it works as a mini-microwave to get the plasma excited and start putting out intense light.

[ArtInvent @ Mar 19th 2008 5:12PM]

Streetlights are uniquely suited to LED's, because they need red, green, and yellow, and high powered LED's are fairly cheap in these colors, efficient, and very long-lived.

However, this plasma bulb sounds like it could give WHITE LED's a run for their money, as far as more general illumination is concerned.

White LED's are some of the worst-looking white light available, having a sickly blueish color cast and uneven color around the fringes of the beam. The spectrum they give off isn't even as nice looking as the worst compact fluorescents, which aren't as nice as regular incandescents, which in turn aren't as pleasant as a quartz halogen. Getting a white LED to be real-world efficient, as bright as a 60W incand. bulb, affordable, AND a really nice color is turning out to be a Holy Grail that may not be possible.

[Walter @ Mar 20th 2008 6:48PM]

The Luxim bulb appears to be an RF (Radio Frequency) plasma generator. The best things about it are lack of electrodes, (no heat induced contact degradation or exposed electrical potentials to shock you) high efficiency, an easily replaced glass envelope with essentially inert materials, (minute amounts of metal halogens being the only "baddies") and the replacements should be very inexpensive. Incidentally, the temperature being 6000k is not a problem, as the glass would get nowhere near that hot (it will get hot, but not crazy-hot that the 6000k would lead you to believe). The reasons are twofold, 1) since the plasma is a rarefied gas, it has an extremely low mass. The mass of the gas is going to determine how much heat is conducted to the glass, and since the atoms are rather scarce, and only the ones actually bouncing against the glass can transfer energy to it, little will be transferred. 2) The density of the outside air compared to the plasma is so much greater, you have LOTS of atoms rubbing against the glass to carry heat away, so the glass can stay (relatively) cool. The technology has been around for a long time and is frequently seen (although, in a different form) in the argon "torch" used in some optical mass-spectrometers to carry and heat a sample to generate the spectrum of emission lines used to identify an element. (argon is used because it is inert, and thus won't combine with other elements to form compounds, readily "ignites" to a plasma in the presence of certain radio frequencies and has such specific emission lines, they can be used as a calibration reference, but easily ignored in material identification)

[Saad @ Apr 12th 2008 12:46AM]

why don't we just go to cnet to get our tech news

[Chebwa @ Mar 18th 2008 10:19AM]

Because Tom Merritt and Molly Wood work there, and you might accidentally click one of their videos.

[Ellianth @ Mar 18th 2008 10:25AM]

Che~
What's that supposed to mean? :P

[Eric @ May 7th 2008 1:12PM]

This technology is very cool from an ecological perspective. However, I wonder what the net return on investment for a consumer will be when compared with other technologies. Anything with this type of light will require a massive heat sink.