Fluorescent lamp prices are going up due to new tariffs and mining regulations on rare earth materials exported from China.

http://www.sylvania.com/Phosphors/
http://www.energyblogs.com/connexion1/index.cfm/2011/7/15/TCP-Sheds-Light-on-Rare-Earth-Phosphor-Crisis

I think this would have one healthy effect: It would help to eliminate short lived lamps from the market, as the phosphor cost does not depend on the rest of the lamp design, so e.g. Philips would have difficult time with their Alto lamps...
Hope, then governments would not interfere with anything like banning all non extreme low mercury dosed lamps...

But we will see another bad effect: It would push out all thick lamp designs (T12, FCxT9,...), I would guess last time to stock them up...

I think it may trigger other business: Spent lamp back collection for recycling purposes, what may eliminate the "throw them anywhere" approach to spent lamp disposal by many people...

I doubt it would have any significant influence on LED's (except those remote phosphor concepts), as LED's use only very tiny amount of the phosphor, compare to the fluorescents of the same light output, while due to their prices, LED's have still way larger budget headroom to swallow the phosphor cost increase.

Does this affect halophosphates ? If no, then maybe halophosphate T12 will have comeback

Does this affect halophosphates ? If no, then maybe halophosphate T12 will have comeback

These for sure won't, there is no reason to return to the pure argon T12 - they are more expensive to make, more expensive to handle (bigger), more expensive to run (less efficient, loose efficacy at high temperatures - in enclosed recessed ceiling lights).
Maybe the halophosphates would remain a bit longer then expected in T8, but even this I doubt...
I would really rather guess for the push towards longer life, so the higher unity lamp cost would be more easily swallowed.

But I'm afraid the marketing is too strong and purchaser's education too weak, so it may easily happen, then the "extra-ultra-low" mercury dose lamps would still be sold, people wasting money, but makers still pretend, the these jokes last the same as the "not so low" Hg dose counterparts...

Is there any way to reclaim and reuse phosphor from spent lamps?

Is there any way to reclaim and reuse phosphor from spent lamps?

Technically for sure yes, but I would guess such way is still more expensive then from newly mined raw material.
But if the cost of new materials would rise so steeply as it did last few months, it may become different story.
Moreover there are more stuff in used lamps to be re-used, but still, the separation and cleaning is not for free...

But I think at the moment the recycled phosphor become attractive (it's availability and cost), the cost of the new material would for sure not rise anymore - because the demand for it would drop...

will the degradation be reverseable?
or is this a simple contamination issue that can be refined out?

will the degradation be reverseable?
or is this a simple contamination issue that can be refined out?

With recycling, materials are always contamined by others (from the recycled product, from the environment,...), so the refinning is always necessary. Include recycling of fluorecent tubees...

On the atomic level, an atom is never worn out or destroyed. It can be changed to something else, but that requires a nuclear reaction. In fluorescent lighting, there are no nuclear reactions, only chemical reactions. This means that in theory, the rare earth atoms can be reused if they are purified, and would be as good as new. The process of collecting and refining needs to be in itself, refined, to lower the costs, however.

In a worn out lamp phosphor, the atoms that make up the coating can react with other things in the lamp, usually elemental mercury or substances in the phosphor coating. In theory, this reaction, given the correct amount of the right kind of energy, can be reversed to give back the original subsances. Depending on what elements are wanted out of the recycling, the amount of energy required to do the work can be significant.

Out of interest, if a lamp is recycled by cutting off the ends (with the electrodes), welding new ends to the existing tube with the old phosphor, and filling with new gases inside

How much lower light it will have vs. new tube ?

Can this be improved by chemically treating the phosphor right there on the tube before closing it again ?

Will there be other problems with it besides light output (unreliable starting, short life . . .) ?

Out of interest, if a lamp is recycled by cutting off the ends (with the electrodes), welding new ends to the existing tube with the old phosphor, and filling with new gases inside

How much lower light it will have vs. new tube ?

Can this be improved by chemically treating the phosphor right there on the tube before closing it again ?

Will there be other problems with it besides light output (unreliable starting, short life . . .) ?

I think this would be too labor intensive with very questionable result, strongly dependent on the lamp history.

Such "repair" may be done on lamps, where the components do not mix, nor react, so e.g. XBO cinema lamps are renewed in such manner: The gas is captured and cleaned (redistilled, but because of the high concentration, it is way cheaper then distilling from the normal air), electrodes sharpened, quartz melted (only, because it is so easy to simply throw the fragments of the bulb to the pot with the new melted quartz, otherwise the quartz cost alone would not be worth the whole disassembly) and from that new lamp is made (of course, a bit of new xenon and quartz is added to cover processing losses). But this process is economic only because the really high cost of the used materials (Xenon, tungsten) and/or their processing (tungsten)