
Sulfur Lamp - wolfi1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_lamp
======
RubenSandwich
The efficiency claims of these are very nice:

Sulfur Lamp: 100 lumens per watt. [0]

Random LED Light bulb: 88.888 lumens per watt. [1]

~20% improvement.

[0]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20030818061414/http://195.178.16...](https://web.archive.org/web/20030818061414/http://195.178.164.205/IAEEL/iaeel/newsl/1996/ett1996/LiTech_b_1_96.html)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/TCP-Equivalent-Light-Bulbs-Non-
Dimmab...](https://www.amazon.com/TCP-Equivalent-Light-Bulbs-Non-
Dimmable/dp/B01BFCGBN6/ref=sxin_3_osp20-e7752483_cov?ascsubtag=e7752483-0229-43a1-a742-1cf152cf90a2&creativeASIN=B01BFCGBN6&crid=2S67XR1BNZ6UY&cv_ct_id=amzn1.osp.e7752483-0229-43a1-a742-1cf152cf90a2&cv_ct_pg=search&cv_ct_wn=osp-
search&keywords=led%2Blight%2Bbulbs&linkCode=oas&pd_rd_i=B01BFCGBN6&pd_rd_r=28522f1d-5a89-4c3b-90d4-56ec96c80199&pd_rd_w=D1mJO&pd_rd_wg=McWsM&pf_rd_p=53eff971-6e12-4016-9864-b6dfd929b2b3&pf_rd_r=6YM89H606R25JTM75EAH&qid=1575211510&sprefix=led%2Blight%2Caps%2C139&tag=bestcont06-20&th=1)

~~~
VLM
That's very unfair in that there's LEDs on experimental lab benches running
200+ lumens per watt (very handwavy). Something tells me you won't be getting
amazon prime shipping on a 100 L/W sulfur bulb anytime before you're already
getting amazon prime shipping for 200 L/W LED bulbs... Theoretically LEDs top
out just under 300 L/W under ideal lab conditions, so a theoretical max of 100
L/W for sulfur is not so good.

The real competitor of these "ten kilowatt" class bulbs is theater-type arc
lamp type devices where you can't deal with the weird spectral effects of LEDs
and other quantum mechanical goofiness... Today you can buy COTS xenon lamps
that run around 40 or so watts/lumen, so 100 L/W is a nice upgrade for stage
and film theaters.

I don't know what sportsball stadiums use for night games. For raw bulk ugly
illumination, sodium discharge lamps are COTS around 150 or so L/W, far
surpassing what the sulfur bulbs can do in the lab. Interesting thought
experiment is immense capex was dropped to illuminate sportsball fields and
replacing the lights makes half the demand go away... so are sportsball fields
going to be twice as bright at night or recycle all that power company
infrastructure or is legacy pro sportsball going away with the boomers before
sulfur bulbs could arrive commercially or ?

I don't see an easy way to decouple the magnetron and stuff from the lamp for
sale purposes. A kilowatt class xenon lamp runs over a hundred dollars and
figure a kilowatt class microwave oven and its innards could double the cost
of a sulfur lamp while halving the cost of the electricity... this is really
bad news for theater goers... it'll make theaters even more capital intensive
which means even more risk adverse. If you're tired of formulaic remakes now,
imagine when financial risk is twice as high due to double the bulb cost, LOL.

~~~
amluto
My theater knowledge is dated, but there’s a major potential benefit for LED
in theater: they can modulate quickly.

I’m familiar with two kinds of high-power theatrical lighting: tungsten and
discharge. Tungsten is inefficient and has poor power factor when dimmed.
Discharge lamps can’t cycle quickly, so, as a practical matter, they are
turned in well before a show starts (to make sure they all work!) and stay on,
at full power, until after the show. A motorized shutter modulates the light
output. This wasted tons of power when the shutter is closed.

LEDs can cycle essentially arbitrarily quickly, and a good driver gets a power
factor near 1.

I think it would be interesting to design a theater lighting system with a DC
bus. Tungsten lights (where needed) would be driven by PWM, and LEDs would be
driven directly by PWM if the voltages matched or with a DC-DC converter
otherwise. There would be a battery to even out the load to minimize demand
charges.

I don’t know what a three-phase AC-to-DC converter rated for, say, 100kW would
cost. You’d want one that can be controlled such that it can share load in a
controlled manner with a battery on the DC side.

~~~
detaro
What benefit does a DC bus have over decentralized AC-DC converters? You'd
still need fairly high voltages to keep current manageable, and high-voltage
DC has its own set of "fun" challenges.

~~~
amluto
I haven’t made any effort to analyze this for real, but:

A circuit to drive a tungsten lamp at variable brightness off AC is cheap (a
TRIAC and its driver) but has crap power factor. I imagine a MOSFET to drive
the exact same tungsten lamp from DC at a few hundred Hz PWM would be almost
as cheap and could be filtered to have a clean input waveform. (Or it could be
driven above 20kHz to eliminate the annoying audible buzz that tungsten lamps
make.)

A big LED driver (AC to DC, constant current or constant voltage plus some
dimming mechanism) is not particularly cheap, and the nice ones are largeish.
A pure 24V “dimmer” (12-48V in, same voltage out, adjustable PWM frequency,
and DMX controls) can be had quite cheaply with excellent performance. A
constant current driver would be more expensive, but a DC-input driver ought
to be smaller and less expensive than a comparable AC-input driver, especially
if you care about power factor and inrush current.

(Common commercial AC-input LED drivers often have godawful inrush current,
because they have big filter caps to get good performance, and they don’t
spend the extra money on fancy circuitry to limit the inrush current. This
means that you can’t actually put 20A of driver on a 20A breaker because the
inrush current will trip the breaker. With DC input, a much smaller filter cap
should give comparable performance.)

Anyway, this is all mostly speculation, and economies of scale matter. But
those DC DMX dimmers really do exist.)

------
ajmarcic
The spectrum of these lamps is much closer to sunlight than others:
[https://sound-au.com/lamps/sp-lamp-f2.jpg](https://sound-au.com/lamps/sp-
lamp-f2.jpg)

This would be ideal for offering indoor sunlight substitutes.

------
yummypaint
Anyone know about RF pollution with these devices? A normal bulb just stops
working when it fails, but these seem to have the potential to spew hundreds
of watts of noise if they malfunction in the wrong way. I wonder how probable
that would be for a large, poorly maintained installation, maybe something on
the coast within range of sea spray carried by wind.

~~~
wyxuan
It's in the article. It disrupts the 2.4 GHz band, so filters have to be
installed

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ncmncm
My take on articles like this is mostly melancholy. That lamp was somebody's
baby, and it was put into production and then abandoned shortly after. This
happens so frequently with inventions; they are abandoned until the original
patent runs out, then later revived on a secondary patent by somebody else.

The silicon-carbide electrode version might give the material basis, if not
the original technique, a second chance.

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gorgoiler
It would be pleasant to have a low energy alternative to LEDs. I had to
replace the LED bulbs in my kitchen as it made all my food look strange.

The light was warm but had a custard yellow color to it that seemed
monochromatic. Replaced with halogen lamps until something better comes along.

~~~
VLM
Its worth considering that prototype units ran around 6KW and my 90 watts of
high CRI LEDs is very bright, so a sulfur bulb in the kitchen could cook the
food off waste heat while providing reef aquarium levels of illumination in
the sink causing algae blooms. When there's algae growing in your sink you
know you have too much kitchen illumination.

A not entirely insane, but only mostly insane, idea would be a dishwasher that
had infinitely free energy and an extremely bright light source could clean
dishes slowly by using immense amounts of light to grow rapid doubling algae,
then cycle to mushroom darkness to eat the algae and food debris. So tens of
kilowatts and distilled water for rinsing and you've got a space ship
dishwasher. Of course with tens of kilowatts and distilled water, you'd be
better off with thermal decomposition and autoclave functionality but maybe
bio would be more popular for stylistic or marketing greenwashing purposes. I
suppose on a space ship using your dishwasher to generate a couple kilos of O2
per day off food waste would be of some benefit to the life support system.

------
lightedman
Already outshone by LED. We've got >80CRI 200+l/w LEDs (MK-R by Cree, been out
for almost a decade) and 350l/w is already in the lab.

Even the pot growers shied away from this tech. The lacking red inhibited
decent flowering. If you can't make an inroad there, you're almost guaranteed
to fail.

------
LargoLasskhyfv
This needs to be in the Cybertruck.

~~~
zeroping
Many of these are in the Kw power range. That said, I like the idea of
stadium-light brightness levels on a Cybertruck.

~~~
OnlineGladiator
> That said, I like the idea of stadium-light brightness levels on a
> Cybertruck.

I don't. I think people will abuse it, blind others on the road, and it will
literally kill multiple people before they're made illegal (if they're not
already - I have no idea what the regulations are for automotive lighting).

~~~
jsilence
The cybertruck can cyber black holes into the beam where the eyes of the other
cars drivers eyes are.

