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The "truth" about eco bulbs ;-)

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MacGyverS2000

MacGyverS2000

Electrical
Dec 22, 2003
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Had to include the smirk in the title considering the number of posts we've had in the past about eco-friendly bulbs (i.e., LEDs and CFLs) from crackpots, tree huggers without facts, etc. I figured this would be easy enough to point to if any more show up.

It's a short little article about some of the not quite false, not quite true advertising the lighting industry and politicos use to push their agenda. It doesn't say eco-bulbs aren't eco-friendly, just that their not as friendly as many want them to be (or claim):

Dan - Owner
Footwell%20Animation%20Tiny.gif
 
Without a regulating body or standard the manufacturers have printed "optimal" data on the packaging of CFL's and LED bulbs. In the US the DOE and EPA have been working on qualification data for LED (SSL) for a long while and are getting more companies to fall in line with the data on the packaging. There will come a point where the consumer will have to get familiar with certifications in order to get their monies worth.

If you check the DOE site for CALiPER test results, the DOE states that most of the bulbs they test do not meet the manufacturers specs. The lousy products on the market will taint the perception of high efficiency bulbs making high quality products more difficult to sell considering the initial cost difference.

Some of the people pushing low quality product do so knowingly. That can be said for many industries. Many people that have jumped on the idea of higher efficiencies for lighting have good intentions but may not have the technical background to discern the good product from the bad. That doesn't make them a "crackpot" (although I will conceed that there are plenty of crackpots to go around!).

LED bulbs are coming. Making them high quality AND affordable to the consumer will be enough of a challenge without having to overcome the impression that they are junk.

Harold
SW2010 SP1.0 OPW2010 SP1.0 Win XP Pro 2002 SP3
Dell 690, Xeon 5160 @3.00GHz, 3.25GB RAM
nVidia Quadro FX4600
 
Harold,

The "crackpots" I'm referring to are like the guy who keeps posting on here (and getting kicked off) while getting his facts mixed up (such as LEDs use mercury, not CFLs, and therefore are dangerous to humans, etc.). I'm all for LEDs over CFLs, and I know the better units out there win in the energy efficiency race alone (not to mention light spectrum quality, directionality, etc.), but the main issue for me is the manufacturers lofty claims that simply cannot be verified in a real-world environment. Sure, a CFL may be five times more efficient than an incandescent, but as the article points out, that's only true if you're comparing a frosted envelope "soft-white" incandescent in a "room temp" area... move to a clear envelope on the incandescent and put the CFL in a fixture, suddenly you're at three to one. Bulb lifetime is another big one for me (particularly with LEDs, where now everyone and their uncle specifies a 50k or 100k hours lifetime with no understanding of what that figure means.

Anyway, just thought the 10,000-foot view article would be of interest to some...

Dan - Owner
Footwell%20Animation%20Tiny.gif
 
Dan,

I know who you are refering to. I had a "discussion" with him deleted from the forum not that long ago! The 50 - 100K hours is another area of contention. The DOE tests point out several products that didn't survive initial burn in. To some extent I feel for the engineers that have to deal with the marketers when it comes to pegging numbers on the box. Quantifying lighting performance is rarely straight forward.

I book marked the article for reference. Thanks for posting it.

Harold
SW2010 SP1.0 OPW2010 SP1.0 Win XP Pro 2002 SP3
Dell 690, Xeon 5160 @3.00GHz, 3.25GB RAM
nVidia Quadro FX4600
 
Well, actually LEDs are almost worse than just using CFDs. The basic material is an amalgam of indium, phosphorus, arsenic gallium, etc, none of which can be processed without noxious chemicals. The various processing steps to make the diode incur toxic or hazardous gases and chemicals. The clear and colored packages incur a different set of chemical processes that are not exactly environment friendly as well.

An amusing anecdote: about 30 yrs ago, I worked for an aerospace company with a semiconductor lab. One day, the facilities guys come rushing into the lab, asking everyone what we put down our drains; it turned out that our drain pipes had pretty much corroded into nothingness. "Well, we have some sulphuric, nitric, phosphoric, hydrifluoric, etc., acids, but they're all very small quantities." Needless to say, that started off a major expenditure and effort to replumb all our drains into a neutralizer system.

Nowadays, we probably would have gotten our asses canned, and our company fined.

And let's not forget the erstwhile Fairchild Semiconductor plant in south San Jose that required building a slurry moat around the entire plant to contain the carbon tet that seeped into the ground water.

So, yes, that guy might be wrong about mercury, but LEDs are probably not better, overall.

TTFN

FAQ731-376
 
IR,

During processing, controlling the chemicals used (and their runoffs) is a significantly easier job... you know exactly what's being used and where, so even if LED-based processing used nastier materials, their not released into the environment (unless the company you worked for had a hand in it ;-)). It's the end-of-life phase of a product that's so problematic (and the main shouting point for eco dudes). When a bulb is thrown away, it's crushed, releasing any chemicals inside. When an LED is thrown away, you have to pulverize the encapsulant to get anything out of it... any nasty chemicals inside are miniscule in content, with most not being harmful in their processed form anyway.

Dan - Owner
Footwell%20Animation%20Tiny.gif
 
No argument, there. I, however, being the argumentative type, have customers that have injunctions against "any" hazardous materials in the end-product. So, I politely ask them if they have a few billion to spend on developing a new infrared detector that doesn't use mercury cadmium telluride, or indium antinmonide, and are they willing to fund the development of a laser receiver that doesn't use indium gallium arsenide?

Their safety will usually splutter and smoke and say that they didn't really mean "any," and so, I then ask for exemptions, which are then granted.

Ditto the requirement for lead-free solder...

TTFN

FAQ731-376
 
In a way, it's a bit exciting.

I remember reading papers about tin whiskers, but by the time I started working, the problem had been mostly solved, so I'm actually a bit excited about possibly seeing them for real... ;-)

TTFN

FAQ731-376
 
Not to be a spoiler, but in the application of plant growth the LED's can be deemed as more efficent. Maybe some other applications too.

It gos like this, plants respond better to some light frequencys better than others. With an LED, you can tailer the color to the most responcive frequencys. With an incondecent, or floresent, the tailoring of color frequencys is difficult, so the common method is to blast the plants with an almost full spectrum of light.

Note: I recently noted plants growing mostly in the direction of a floresent black light. It's not very efficent, and the life is short, but it does work, or grow.
 
Cranky,

Plant growth is a given, not a bubble-burster. LEDs are typically considered "more efficient" because of their directionality and wavelength selectability, and grow lights are an ideal problem to be solved with them.

Dan - Owner
Footwell%20Animation%20Tiny.gif
 
I'm just pointing out a perception problem.

In general the HPS looks like the more efficent light source, but it as most has drawbacks.

The problem I've seen with floresent, and LED's is finding the color frequencys that I want (Back to the general lighting). The problem being is I want the near UV, and near IR frequencies.
 
Some LEDs contain phosphor anyway, more or less just like fluorescent bulbs.

I've confirmed this myself. I have an LED bulb in a bedside table lamp (an 'early adopter' experiment). The LED bulb has an obvious afterglow after the power is cut (turned off, lamp unplugged, bulb unscrewed).

 
IRStuff--

I won't pass on the "tin whiskers" comment. A huge German-named electrical conglomerate sold my employer some medium-voltage variable frequency drives with (you guessed it) tin-plated copper bus interconnects in what I (an old electrical power guy) considered to be a very close proximity.

We had two catastrophic failures, both covered under warranty. The manufacturer's root cause failure analysis for the failures was tin whiskers. The bus connectors are now nickel plated.

Fortunately I laid back a supply of real Pb-Sn solder that should last me until I'm too decrepit to use it for my hobbies.

old field guy
 
Lead-free is only a serious issue with ROHS and European customers. The US seems to be staying off the bandwagon for the most part.

TTFN

FAQ731-376
 
I have a $300+ LED spotlight I bought years ago. At that price it must have been the very first one. Being 3W it has about 100 LEDs in it. Hideously not-bright. I ran it with an OPTO22 solid state relay. Just the snubber circuit in the SSR kept the light at about %70. So really, my control just shifted from 100% to 70%.

Keith Cress
kcress -
 
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