In an era of the rise of LEDs, some just refuse to give up on incandescent innovation. The Venture 2X program appears to have been disbanded because they sold Deposition Sciences earlier this year, they were responsible for the development of the films used on IR capsules. The website 2xbulb.com had gone down. The 2xlightdirect.com website is still up at last check. I was lucky to have grabbed a 2 pack of the Vybrant 50w 1600 lumen bulbs. I assumed the entire industry went full steam forward on developing LED replacements, especially that helium filled LED lamps are starting to rise (such as the LED filament model).

Then this came up today:

http://ecandescent.com/#about

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/611933709/ecandescent-the-last-bulb-youll-ever-need

To tell you the truth, they will never last that long. In the 90s I remember incandescent bulbs advertised with a 100 year lifespan, and I have a few in my collection. The now closed Kmart near my former home in Santa Cruz had 6 packs of 60w and 100w 100 year bulbs for sale in 1997. They put some of these in the warehouse area, and they lasted just a couple of years. Snake oil!

Also, the 28w bulb is actually 75w equivalent, and the 42w bulb is actually 115w equivalent, despite the claim they are 100w and 150w equivalent, respectively. At least they do meet the 2020 standards.

What's your take on this? Be your opinion, don't think of my words yet.

Look like underdriven IR "recycling" (bulb coating reflect the IR back to the filament, so the main losses are reduced) halogens.
Don't think it makes much sense formost common household use to boost the lifetime by sacrificing the efficacy, the electricity cost is way higher than the bulb cost.
And I doubt the 100khour life and 40lm/W ratings would apply both for the same bulb model, it would be either the first one or the second one, never both together.

Same technology bulbs were offered in the 12V form (there the filament couldbe most compact, so the IR recycling most efficient) by major makers for some time, in the 30lm/W 6000hour rating, but I do not see tham too often anymore. Today most common in the R7s linear halogen format.

Looks like what they did was take the 2x bulb and include one of those "bulb-saver" disc (pretty much a diode that chops part of the AC sine wave so the filament gets around 80 volts instead of the usual 120 volts

With incandescent lamps you can extend the life considerably by dimming them.  However the same rules do not hold true for halogen-filled lamps.  Especially a low current lamp like this.  When underloaded, they tend to fail due to attack of the halogen gas filling on the cold ends of the filament.

I think someone has simply done a calculation here using the old incandescent lamp life exponents to calculate how much longer it will last when run on half-rectified AC mains - and presumed that the same will apply to the Halogen-IR capsule but without the necessary experience or testing to back up these assumptions.  If they have started lifetesting, they will find out the truth in about 5000 hours time!

I don't know, what these inserts actually are, the diode would be one option, but that would cause 60Hz flicker.
I would rather guess for either an NTC to mainly limit the inrush current
or something like a SIDAC - a device turning ON when it sees certain voltage, so cut out the initial part of the mains sinewave and reduce the rms voltage that way.

Limitting the inrush current would make sense, as it could extend the halogen lamp cycle life quite a lot, mainly the mains voltage ones.
The reason is, the filament heats up unevenly and so tend to locally overheat for a short time. This effect is the same for classic, as well as halogen lamps.It is short in time, so has not much effect for the classic incandescents, but because halogens are designed for higher operating temperature, the extra short time overheating is sufficient to cause the tungsten to recrystallize in the hot spots, so make that effect gradually worse over time.
When you limit the inrush current, the lamp then heats up slowly and so way more evenly, so those hot intermittent spots do not form anymore.

It seems another scam.

It seems another scam.

I think so too...
Quite common for such "miracle products" from a "company" without any history whatsoever. Just took some basic ideas from existing products (IR reflectors on halogens, underdriving nonhalogen incandescents, halogen cycle, probably soft starting as well,...) and made claims by just plainly "summing up" the individual aspects. But without the real knowledge of the matter, so ignoring the dependencies...

Very similar are the claims of "superefficient steam engines" instead of the regular internal combustion ones - mostly ignoring the second law of thermodynamics and/or limitations of known materials () with the fundamentals of the combustion chemistry (just because the hot end temperatures would have to be many 1000's degC, what no known materials could stand and where the combustion of the expected fuel will just not work anymore) and so on...

Sometimes wonder if the people behind are really believing in that, or if it is designed as a fraud from the start...
But I guess we will never know, you just can never prove any wrong intentions here...

Sometimes wonder if the people behind are really believing in that, or if it is designed as a fraud from the start...
But I guess we will never know, you just can never prove any wrong intentions here...

I think it is planned fraud.
I'm italian, i live in a place where people wich have money are robbers (representatives, door to door sellers, etc), all politicians are robbers (tangentopoli, expo 2015, etc  ) so i have learned to predict who will robber you, and all alarms are flashing with this found rising.

I think it will follow the common fate of a lot of "free energy" invention: as Medved said, it starts with an "miracle product" which follow an fund rising, a lot of promotion, after a while delivery delayed due (insert an plausible (...)) and, after 2-3 months, everything is vanished.

My alarms are flashing because:
- first, they tell this bulb consume 50% less than standard bulb, so an 100W bulb will consume 50W; efficiency rise from 13lm/W to 26lm/W.
- second, they tell "At 27 watts the eCandescent™ light bulb is just as energy efficient as a CFL", but they don't specify which kind of cfl they compare.
- tirdh, they tell that lamp last 100years if used 3h/day (so, 365*3*100=109,500h), but it can last 10yr if used 24/24 (365*24*10=87600h).
- fourth, they tell when phospor breaks in the tube, uv radiation will escape, but we know glass is an excellent uv shield.
- fifth, they tell cfl will contaminate your home with "dirty electricity"...
- sixth, they tell this lamp won't heat as much as an cfl or led... will someone tell them about blackbody radiator?
- seventh, they tell this lamp is safe for certain categories which cause emotive reaction to human people.

and, last: they tell an 27W lamp will replace an 100W incandescent... now they consume 70% less than an classic...

Say if a mercury containing bulb broke, does the mercury actually vaporize into the air?

Say if a mercury containing bulb broke, does the mercury actually vaporize into the air?

The mercury does vaporize, till it's saturated vapor pressure at the given temperature. t around 25degC it already means dangerous (per safety standards) concentration.
But the vapor is quite dense, so does not move that far and it tend to stay low. So practically it forms just rather small cloud around the mercury droplet.
The amalgam pressure regulation designs of many todays fluorescents cause the mercury being quite strongly held in the amalgam pellet (it does release only when it is heated), so the pressure is then way lower.