Ceravision
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Ceravision is a privately owned lighting company based in
HEP lighting technology is ideally suited for a number of high-output commercial lighting applications. Ceravision has exploited the ability to use various doses to efficiently deliver tailored spectra for particular applications. The company has launched an HEP plasma grow-light for the horticulture and hydroponics markets that delivers the blue-light, UV-A and UV-B missing from most available grow-light spectrums in the market. However, HEP plasma lighting technology lends itself to several other high-output applications including lighting for: reptile houses; artificial coral growth; insect breeding; TV film and studio; and ultra-violet (UV-C) water sterilisation.
Electrodeless lamp
- No electrodes to break - so potentially very long life
- No chemical degradation of the electrodes - so much lower lumen loss and discoloration during life
- No reactive chemicals in the light engine to cause material stress and reduced life.
The inherent problems with constraining the radio waves within the lamp and minimising RF power have been successfully overcome.
Developments
Earlier incarnations, such as the
to constrain and focus the radio waves. Though the resulting lamp was small and produced a large number of lumens per watt at the bulb, the lamp efficiency was low since 80-85% of the light generated is trapped inside the opaque ceramic waveguide.Ceravision's invention was a clear
The second issue - long life, low cost RF generation has been solved using a combination of a
The historic problem with magnetrons had been their short life (the life of a microwave magnetron was typically c.2,000 hours). Ceravision has developed a method of extending the life of magnetrons to over 40,000 hours. Ceravision has an agreement with Toshiba to develop high efficiency magnetrons.[3]
The lamp consists of four integrated elements; a quartz RF resonator and integral plasma burner (lamp), a transition unit (the system which couples the RF source to the resonator), a