Lighting-Gallery.net
Lamps => Modern => Topic started by: Santaarnpaal on July 10, 2006, 03:01:53 PM
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Xenon lamps well known in car headlights but i do not see them in use in streetlighting or other aplications. Why?
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The Xenon lamps you are probably thinking of in car headlights are HID metal halide lamps, actually, but they use Xenon for starting plus a special ballast & instant-restrike ignitor to minimize the warm up time (you will notice they are a mercury vapor blue color for a few seconds just after being turned on). (I used to think they were pure Xenon arc lamps until I read otherwise).
There'd be no advantage to using this setup for streetlighting, where the warmup time of a standard (argon filled) metal halide lamp is not a problem and it will last longer (up to 20,000 hrs vs about 2000 I think for the car headlight). Now, for indoor household lighting - I wouldn't mind having some but I doubt they will ever exist because of the high cost, short life and high-voltage hazard.
There also are Xenon-filled incandescents (too inefficent for streetlighting) and Xenon short-arc lamps (also too inefficent for streetlighting use, but they are used for high power search lights).
I do agree that the white color of vaporized Xenon does make a nice light though.
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Thanks for the information 8)