If you change your 2ft T12 tube to a 2ft 18w tube, you go from a 20w tube to an 18w tube, thus costing less in electricity. If you changed your 2ft t8 fitting to a 2ft t5 fitting, you go from 18w down to 14w. According to Mercury Recycling , the mercury from found in just one fluorescent tube can pollute 30, litres of water enough to make it unsafe for human consumption. This means that safe disposal of tubes is vital to minimise negative environmental impact and the risk of poisoning.
Fluorescent tubes are classified as hazardous waste and despite only posing a small risk to human health, they can cause environmental damage. Mercury Recycling recommends recycling, as opposed to disposing of, your fluorescent tubes as the safest and cheapest option.
For more information, read our guide to fluorescent tube disposal. Yes, and using them can be of great benefit to your fish. Read our guide for further information. Yes, please read our in-depth guide on how to grow plants indoors using fluorescent lamps.
You will need a starter if you are running your tubes using switch start control gear. If you are using high frequency, a starter is not needed. If you are using 2ft 18w t8 tubes in series more than one tube in the fitting , you will need a series starter. If you are running one tube between 4 and 65w you would use a universal starter. Any tubes over 65w need a high power starter. This is not recommended, as fluorescent tubes get a little hot when in use.
We sell a range of coloured fluorescent tubes in T5 or T8. There will be a number of possible reasons for this. If it still flickers, the starter may have failed in switch start circuits. If it still flickers, the ballast may be failing and will need replacing.
Read our troubleshooting guide for more information. 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. How it works: the Magnetic Ballast. 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. Therefore the transformer only has to slow current flow for a moment.
Weaknesses: The magnetic ballast operates at lower frequencies than an electronic ballast, it also rarely can fail and drip hot tar. Tar is used to insulate the transformers in the ballast and reduce the humming noise. Some older fixtures have a capacitor with PCBs inside, but it is a very small amount, about one teaspoon. Equally electronic ballasts have phenol, arsenic and their own set of contaminants. Left: Historic ballasts galore at the Edison Tech Center's storage building.
Above: electronic ballast in a CFL. Electronic Ballasts: The electronic ballasts use semiconductors to limit power to a fluorescent lamp.
First the ballast rectifies the AC power, then it chops it to make a high frequency for improved efficiency. The ballast can more precisely control power than a magnetic ballast but does have a number of problems. The design is quite different for each lamp. Some lamps only need a simple resistor to control power. LEDs need a low power resistor for current control. The resistor is not acceptable for larger power lamps because it creates a lot of waste heat and therefore reduces efficiency.
Electronic ballasts are usually viewed as being more efficient because by running a lamp at a higher frequency you get more efficacy or brightness from the lamp above 10kHz. This is in theory, however poorly or cheaply constructed ballasts will ruin the advantage of the electronic ballast.
Most electronic ballasts are cheaply constructed in China. Manufacturers use as little copper and other expensive materials as possible. Components have less ability to deal with heat and rigors of long life. Regular fluorescent lamps discharge tube assemblies have the ability to be highly efficient, but poorly made ballasts are the limiting factor.
Electronic ballasts also have a way of failing prematurely due to overheating and this limits the great life of the lamp. The stated life of a lamp on the box usually is not to be believed.
How it works: Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps. The Cold Cathode Lamp is different from a Hot Cathode in that it has an interior coating that more easily creates free electrons when used with higher voltages. 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 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.
Neon Lamp is a term describing lamps with a tube smaller than 15 mm in diameter. Advantages -CCFLs come on instantly at full brightness -They are more reliable starting in cold weather -They have a long life -They are dimmable to some degree -Light created is easier on the human eye Disadvantages. Design Variations. Right : A giant compact fluorescent along with a U-shaped configuration, "twisty" bulb CFLs, Circline, and other shapes.
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. Inventors and Developments: The 80 year road to the modern fluorescent lamp. Below: our YouTube video highlighting the inventors and their contributions:. He was the first to use a phosphor coating but it was 30 years later before others really put the phosphor coating idea back into the spotlight.
Paris, France. This lamp had greenish unpleasant phosphors. It was not really a "fluorescent lamp" as we know today because it did not have electrodes. His high frequency ballast was a predecessor to modern high frequency ballasts used in modern fluorescent ballasts. We have another webpage just on induction lamps here. New York City, New York. The phosphors were excited by x-rays in a glass tube.
The lamp had very short life and unpleasant color. Clarence Dally helped Edison build the lamp, but died after exposure to radiation. Edison developed a healthy fear of x-rays after his death and abandon the project. West Orange, New Jersey. The tube looked very much like today's light except that it was longer and used CO2 and Nitrogen to make a pink and white light. His lights were reliable and sold to department stores in the New York City area.
The lamp was short lived in that it was expensive to replace and the Mercury Vapor lamp was competition. An electric arc through mercury vapor is the basis for the modern fluorescent lamp. It would be another 20 years before mercury vapor was experimented with in the fluorescent lamp.
Hewitt's work with electrodes and ballasts formed a basis from which fluorescent lamps operate. New York, New York. Coolidge developed ductile tungsten wire which revolutionized the incandescent light bulb.
The material also happened to be perfect for all arc discharge lamps and vacuum tubes and x-ray tubes. Tungsten has one of the highest melting points of any metal which made it a robust material for making electrodes in fluorescent lamps later on. Schenectady, New York. Photo: General Electric. This lamp is actually a simple type of fluorescent lamp. It uses neon and argon gas and has two electrodes in a tube.
Original neon lamps did not use a phosphor. It is considered a cold cathode fluorescent lamp. His lamp used UV rays from mercury vapor. It glowed a greenish color due to his phosphors, but had a short life. The hostile conditions in the arc tube corroded the electrodes and destroyed the lamp.
If more attention had been paid to his work and more funds invested, he might have finished developing the lamp. The ugly green color did not help him persuade investors. Berlin, Germany. Hull had contributed much in the field of vacuum tubes, he was able to build of the work of Moore whose patents were bought by General Electric.
Hull was able to develop a stronger UV emission from the tube. Most importantly he developed a way to make electrodes that would not disintegrate. He set the stage for the final advancements 6 years later. Photo: Edison Tech Center. Roberts develop the first true fluorescent lamp. Their lamp has real white phosphors, is stable, reliable, and their design has not changed much in 78 years.
Photo: The Schenectady Museum. See the timeline below for more details. Found and Willard Roberts w C. Nickel and G. Fonda Schenectady all work on better phosphors for more light output with better white colors. They discover the use of zinc-beryllium silicate and magnesium tungstate. He did not patent the lamp early on and GE though it would be too expensive to manufacture. Later on the spiral tube design spread and became the lamp we know today. Hammer works under original light creator Richard Thayer.
In addition to this Ed Hammer also developed more efficient straight tube lamps starting with the F Watt Miser. The key to hot cathode lamps is the ballast. In order to create the arc and subsequent glow of light, the ballast spikes the standard volts to nearly twice that amount. The high voltage rapidly heats the tungsten filaments, forcing a current through the gases to jumpstart the arc. However, almost immediately the stepped up voltage is choked off to keep the lamp from short circuiting.
Gas has a resistance that is dependent on the temperature. The colder the gas is, the more resistance it has, and a higher voltage is needed to get started. The high voltage is dangerous and difficult to create so the ballast manages the current, sparking and maintaining the light. Ballasts are either listed magnetic or electronic and there are several types of start methods that ballasts can use to start a fluorescent.
The most well-known methods are preheat, rapid start, instant start, and programmed start. Older lamps used the preheat method which had a separate starter switch warm up the cathodes before powering the lamp, allowing for lower voltages to be used.
Modern lamps often use electronic instant start ballasts to quickly supply hundreds of Volts to the lamp for an instant lighting rather than a gradual warm up. You may know them mostly as neon signs and the occasional spiral tube under an A-shaped cover. CCFLs, not to be confused with CFLs, use solid metal thimble-like cathodes which are more durable than the tungsten coils of hot cathodes lamps.
The cathodes are not heated beforehand and a high voltage is applied to allow the lamps to turn on to full brightness instantaneously. Cold cathode lamps use a higher voltage than your typical linear fluorescents to ionize the mercury vapor.
Cold cathodes heat up to about degrees Fahrenheit. However, that is several hundred degrees cooler than the degree temperature surrounding the filaments of a hot cathode fluorescent lamp.
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