Table of Contents
What are metal halide bulbs made of?
A metal-halide lamp is an electric light that produces light by an electric arc through a gaseous mixture of vaporized mercury and metal halides[1][2] (compounds of metals with bromine or iodine). It is a type of high-intensity discharge (HID) gas discharge lamp.
What is a metal halide ballast?
Metal halide (MH) ballasts are required to start the lamp, regulate the lamp starting and lamp operating currents, and provide appropriate sustaining supply voltage. The ballast is set to deliver relatively stable power to the lamp while regulating the lamp current despite typical line voltage fluctuations.
Can you touch metal halide bulb?
You should be extremely careful never to get skin oils or anything else on a small MH lamp (the small ones are around the size of a fingertip or so). This will definitely harm the lamp and can cause premature failure.
Which rod is used in metal-halide lamp?
The lamp has a optimum combination of metal halides made of rare earth metals. It has a quartz discharge tube with rod-shaped electrodes made of tungsten and a power supply of high voltage DC.
What is a metal halide chemistry?
Metal halides are compounds between metals and halogens. Some, such as sodium chloride are ionic, while others are covalently bonded. Covalently bonded metal halides may be discrete molecules, such as uranium hexafluoride, or they may form polymeric structures, such as palladium chloride.
What is metal halide for?
Uses. Metal-halide lamps are used for general lighting purposes both indoors and outdoors, such as commercial, industrial, and public spaces, parking lots, sports arenas, factories, and retail stores, as well as residential security lighting; automotive and specialty applications are further fields of usage.
What causes metal halide lamps to explode?
MH lamps will fail catastrophically as you witnessed if they are run beyond their rated life. It can also happen if they are on continuously and not turned off at least 15 minutes per week, per instructions.
How many hours does a metal halide bulb last?
Metal Halide lights have an better lifespan relative to old technology like incandescent lights but they have a short lifespan compared to LED. Typical lifespan values range from 6,000 hours to 15,000 hours before a bulb requires replacement.
How metal halide is formed?
Metal halides are also prepared by the neutralization of a metal oxide, hydroxide, or carbonate with the appropriate halogen acid. For example, with sodium hydroxide: NaOH + HCl → NaCl + H2O. Water may be removed by heat, vacuum, or the presence of anhydrous hydrohalic acid.
How halide is formed?
The alkali metals combine directly with halogens under appropriate conditions forming halides of the general formula, MX (X = F, Cl, Br or I). Many salts are halides; the hal- syllable in halide and halite reflects this correlation. All Group 1 metals form halides that are white solids at room temperature.
Is HPS metal halide?
Metal halide bulbs, sometimes shortened to just “MH” and high pressure sodium bulbs, sometimes shortened to simply “HPS”, are in a family called High Intensity Discharge bulbs, or “HID” for short. The bulbs in this family produce a large amount of lumens, which is why they’re used for public spaces, like stadiums.
What kind of metal is used in a metal halide lamp?
In metal halide lamps, that is normally metals that have been mixed with iodine or bromine. Additionally, the type of metal halides used helps determine the color temperature of the light emitted. The MH lamp itself is built with two main sections — the outer bulb and the inner arc tube.
What kind of metal is in metal filament?
Metal filled filaments contain very fine metal powder such as Copper, Bronze, Brass, and Stainless Steel. The percentage of metal powder infused in each filament can vary depending on the manufacturer. The presence of this metal powder makes the filament much heavier than standard plastics.
How long does a metal halide light bulb last?
Failure to replace a commercial light bulb before complete lamp failure will damage the ballast and cause a drastic increase in maintenance costs. In the case of Metal Halide, most manufacturers rate these HID light bulbs with a life of approximately 20,000 hours.
Is there such thing as a white halide light?
Metal halide lamps are great because of their vivid white “natural” light that they emit. With LEDs, there really is no such thing as “white light”. You have to use a number of different colors to eventually get white light. This means sometimes the light can be too blue.