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Glowing Walls Could Kill Off the Light Bulb
A chemical coating on the walls will illuminate all parts of the room with an even glow, which mimics sunlight and avoids the shadows and glare of conventional bulbs.
Wallpaper that glows, lighting up a room evenly, with sunlight-like coloring, and consuming a fraction of the energy of an overhead lamp. Thanks to an enormous grant, one company is working out how to make our wallpaper into a light source, using super low-power OLED lighting technology. Although an electrical current will be used to stimulate the chemicals to produce light, the voltage will be very low and the walls will be safe to touch. Dimmer switches will control brightness, as with traditional lighting.
The Carbon Trust has awarded a £454,000 grant to Lomox, a Welsh company that is developing the organic light-emitting diode technology. The trust said it would be two and a half times more efficient than energy-saving bulbs and could make a big contribution to meeting Britain's target of cutting carbon emissions by 34 per cent by 2020. Indoor lighting accounts for a sixth of total electricity use.
The chemical coating, which can be applied in the form of specially treated wallpaper or simply painted straight on to walls, can also be used for flat-screen televisions, computers and mobile phone displays.
As the system uses only between three and five volts, it can be powered by solar panels or batteries. Lomox, which will use the grant to prove the durability of the technology, believes it could be used in the first instance to illuminate road signs or barriers where there is no mains electricity.
Ken Lacey, the chief executive of Lomox, said that the first products would go on sale in 2012. "The light is a very natural, sunlight-type of lighting with the full color range. It gives you all kinds of potential for how you do lighting," he said.
Although organic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have been available for several years, Mr Lacey said that concerns over cost and durability had prevented further development. He said that Lomox had developed a much cheaper process and discovered a combination of chemicals that were not vulnerable to the oxidation that shortened the operating life span of other types of organic LEDs.
Mr Lacey said the technology could be used to make flexible screens that could be rolled up after use, or carried into a presentation, for example.
Mark Williamson, director of innovations at the Carbon Trust, said: "Lighting is a major producer of carbon emissions. This technology has the potential to produce ultra-efficient lighting for a wide range of applications, tapping into a huge global market.
"It's a great example of the innovation that makes the UK a hotbed of clean technology development."
41 Comments so far
Show AllWOW! If the chemicals are organic as they infer, this could be great.
Er.. 'organic' in chemistry just means carbon based compounds and chemistry. Its not organic food. ;-)
Correct. The implication is they are biodegradable and not carcenogenic. But I'm assuming these are a new suite of chemicals, thus the above propereties must be proven prior to their introduction per the Precautionary Principle.
I googled a little and they are calling it green. Who knows? Need more info.
Testing new chemical compounds is way behind the curve. Some 12,000 new compounds are introduced each year if I remember right from an article in ChemTech, and 600 or so get checked out for dangerness. Get in line light-walls.
Gary
True enough, those squirrely bulbs suck.
I have been solar for decades and have a large spectrum of types of lights. But no CF's
Good article except ........
There is no reason not to power conventional lights with renewal energy now, lights take very little power compared to most demands.
Unless you need to power stadium lights.
yes, but...how about a solar-collecting hat and a suit made from this stuff? fashion changes at will? stripes to paisely at the touch of a button...or verbal command...or cerebral impulse via implanted chip...
does this, finally, mean life-sized moving sex walls featuring attractive virtual people?
the future is incredible! too bad it will be so short...
let's get those gardens growing...can't eat light walls...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...all the world's peoples, together...cessation of industry and electricity...acoustic, agrarian living...the big Off...
We are seeing more and more people switch to those CFL bulbs, but virtually all those bulbs have mercury in them.
Meaning they have to go to specialized recycle centers. How many people are throwing them in the trash? How many are educated as to where these recycle centers for CFL bulbs are? (They tend to be stores like the Home Depot or Rona)
What is worse from an enviromental POV.? Using a bit more electricity for a conventional bulb or more mercury in landfills?
I rather doubt that. I installed 65 CFLs in our newly built home 6 years ago and have had to replace 6--5 from one location due to its being effected by vibrations caused by its proximity to the closing of the front door. I knew that--just like flourescent light tubes--they must be recycled as hazardous waste, which was very simple to do as my rural garbage collection company has a drop-off station designed for them and many other materials due to a program coordinated with the county and state.
Maybe it's just you. Maybe you're not part of the "vast majority," you're just vastly stupid.
My understanding is that a greater amount of mercury is emitted (from burning coal) to generate the additional energy for a incandescent bulb than the mercury in a CF bulb - assuming the bulbs last their advertized life.
I once saw a calculation, I'll look up the data and see if I can confirm it.
From what I've read they ALL have mercury in them. Not "virtually all," but ALL.
Furthermore, I don't know what our recycling center does with them, but *I* do NOT have to take them to a "specialized" recycling center. I take them to our ONLY one, they have a specific bin they tell me to put them in, and what happens after that, I do not know.
I do agree with the concern about how many people throw them away out of ignorance.
Glowing walls would drive me crazy - like living permanently in someones avant-garde art-installation.
Why not make the ceiling glow?
Exactly, the obvious application for this is the ceiling, not the walls.
There is no such thing as "green" technology. the end-product may be more efficient (but we've been disappointed by promises before, yes?), but the gathering of resources, the manufacturing and delivery processes pretty much eliminate any benefits the technology might offer.
Anyway, the ubiquitous use of the term "green" on everything from cars to toilet paper is just another marketing gimmick, like "probiotic", "organic", etc.
Also, it is an error on our part to think that tinkering around at the edges of the problems related to green living, climate stabilization, environmental devastation, economic expansion, etc., with clever devices will somehow help us avoid/prevent/work around those problems. Clever technology only delays what is now apparently inevitable. Clever technology is a psychological binkie - you've got the nipple, but no milk.
thank you...well said...mo betta toys are not the answer...the answer is less...or none...
clever binkie bad!
natural nipple good!
redballon 12:31 -----
Wrong !!
Photovoltaic cells so far seem to have no expiration date.
Thus they are manufactured and are never replaced and after that it is emissions free energy for at least decades.
Rather than use batteries one may electrolysize water into Hydrogen and Oxygen and then recombine it for electricity or use them as gases.
There are numerous ways of storing and applying Solar electric and thermal energy,
geothermal ( really taking off now, learn about it, also a system, except for pump that lasts forever), wave, tide, vegetation, wind, Tesla's devices ?, on and on.
There are dozens of renewable energy sources and many are carbon nuetral, very long lasting devices.
Anyone who thinks replacing fossil fuels with renewables is not a win-win proprosition does not have one scientific bone in their body.
actually, there is a great deal of concern for what 7 billion will do...like, continue to industrially manufacture and use and dispose of millions and billions of plastic, chemically-toxic, electro-crap toys, and destroy the entire planet in the process...
what do y'all want all this electricity for, and where do you think all the toys come from, and where do you think they go when you upgrade?
how many will die on our current trajectory?
Well, first there's fusion reactors, that's where you throw all the garbage (we're getting there but not yet). Then with fusion you go to the asteroid belt and do like Frederick Pohl suggested 30 years ago, you collect C-H-O-N in unlimited quantities, turn it into food and mfg products right there in space...simple. Anything left on planet Earth is placed underground like Julian May suggested in her work (Survelliance, Intervention) and we go back to old growth forest from New Jersey to the Mississippi River and from there to the left coast, that's if there's any water left that isn't poison by then, and of course we will have to stop butchering humans in wholesale lots in order to make them slaves of the White Race.
Wassamatter? You don't like neat toys? Well, then, you can't have any.
"....how many will die on our current trajectory?" Everybody. Nobody gets out of here alive. Nobody. Guaranteed. Hopefully with some replacements to carry on.
yes, ll,
fusion reactors are only 20 years away.
Just like they were 20 years ago.
And 20 years before that.
And...
We already have the energy of the future: musclepower, efficiency, solar, wind, and few minor/local types. Local organic permaculture, food forests of the type that have fed people for thousands of years and were mistaken for "wild" lands by European bunglers.
Thank God everybody dies.
Can you imagine if boners like Dick Cheney lived forever?
All the pacemakers in the world will not save old DICK Vader. He has a date with a slot in the ground. Understanding of telomeres is just beginning, and regenerative medicine might have saved him, except the right-wing opposed stem cell research.
Wouldn't that be cool after the Nixon Admin scum all die, a 25 percent life extension via regenerative medicine is achieved?
Talk about NeoCon Poetic Justice...
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Most curious. 3/4 dead. Hmmnnn. Isn't that what the richfilth animals want in order to maintain their global slave empire,aka human die-back? Is this a confluence of interests? If so, there's a simple solution, sterilize the males.
Actually, electrolysis of water isn't a very efficient process for energy storage compared to batteries. Lithium-Iron phosphate batteries have nothing more toxic than alchohol in them.
Glenn, Photovoltaics lose production ability as they age and have a life span of about 20 years.
Nope - the trouble with your view is that you don't look beyond the pv cells amd their admittedly wonderful economies. You forget the land-clearing, the construction of the factory, the manufacture of construction equipment, the power and water used in the factory, the chemicals and the complete costs of their manufacture, the paints, the glues, the paperwork, the sewage system adjustments, the infrastructure surrounding any factory, manufacture, toxic waste disposal, the labour rights violations, the human rights violations, the outsourcing, etc. That's my point; it's not enough to be charmed by the wonders of the final product. You have to consider the entire stream from concept to target...and its social impact.
jm37219 - It has nothing to do with Ludditism - and anyway, the Luddites turned out to be right. It's a matter of properly identifying the problem. While you are salivating about owning a cool glowing wall, you are not considering that, as * dubet * put it, "mo betta toys are not the answer". The answer to what question or problem, though? Is the problem really as tiny and insignificant as how to light a room for less cost, or is there something bigger and more serious needs looking at? I choose option 2. Option 2 (I ought to start and action group called that.) I say you have to consider whether you're doing anything about the social costs also - and will the glowing wall or the Prius or the pv cell correct what is wrong with the system (economic, social, political, spiritual) overall? Or will those things just become another ultimately meaningless consumer "choice"? It apparently does not bother the 1bil of us spoiled, overfed brats that the other 6bil live in our filth and have to eat mud cookies and sell their babies to survive to age 35. Option 2 is Revolution. Radical. And soon. Trouble is, we have no shared vision.
I am one of the overfed brats to whom you refer. I don't like being a member of that set. When the student is ready the master will appear.
"Organic" is a "marketing gimmick?" Are you George W. Bush? That has to be the dumbest statement since "Iraq has WMDs."
What happens if these "chemicals" are exposed to fire? That part seems to have been left out somehow.
Another question is, what happens to humans and pets when they are exposed to these chemicals over time?
I'd be interested to visit a working model, but I'm pretty sure that this innovation would drive ME up the wall.
The article is a bit sketchy-- it doesn't specify how many [ethnic designation here] it will take to change a light wall.
And of course, some waggish drunk at the party will wind up dancing on the coffee table with a wall shade over his or her head.
So I stand by my claim: they're going to have to pry the halogen bulbs from my burned, dead hands.
· Yr Obd't Servant
With the understanding that more specifics are needed before getting too excited over this development, the most intriguing and potentially important parts of the article are:
"a Welsh company that is developing the organic light-emitting diode technology." and ..."As the system uses only between three and five volts, it can be powered by solar panels or batteries."
If this is a case of duplicating what nature already does through biomimicry (the "organic light emitting diode technology" part) and can be powered by solar panels directly or by batteries recharged with solar panels) this technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we design and inhabit indoor and outdoor spaces.
Biomimicry is that branch of chemical engineering that asks, how does nature accomplish this or that task we want to perform and then seeks to reverse engineer a solution that is based on that application. For instance, why not make super glue (and its solvent) the way a barnacle does instead of with petroleum based toxic compounds? Or what if this "organic compound" mimics what lightening bugs do when they glow in the dark?
Bravo to karlof1 and Buck for being the only ones who have picked up on the potential implications of this article.
Poet
This is great! It's not the answer to all our problems, it's just one unexpected solution to some of them. Kudos to the developers--we need more imaginative inventive types like you!
Let's hope there isn't some unseen downside like toxicity or problematic disposal.
...or you can have daylight in your home right now, with one full-spectrum nuclear reactor-powered diffusion field (sometimes called the sky) by being at home in the outside. Or by having those state-of-the-art lumi-atmospheric ingress/eggress wall-portal thingees, what are they called? oh yeah, windows.
Lose your fascination with toys and get real--literally.
Hmm...well...I don't know. One more way for us to screw up our circadian rhythm.
Nature, schmature, sez Man. Who needs Nature?
Maybe I'm just getting old and crotchety.
Great,
Another unknown chemical peeling off the wall into my lungs. Let me guess. It glows, so it's probably another dumping ground for tritium or DU.
More "Wonder Weapons" against the war on Global Warming, when the real problem is millions of peasants slashing and burning the few rain forests we have left down.
1. Outlaw the private automobile
2. Sterilize all the political crime families
3. Tax Babies at 50 percent of annual income
4. Offer incentives for sterilization
OR
kiss your azz goodbye, pop a beer, and watch the Great Homo sapien Extinction event from a comfortable chair.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
We hope the scientists would have such innovations tested for at least a year or more to prove they are scientifically-proven safe for home and office use. Great but deadly, perhaps. Doesn't mean such innovations can kill crawling insects would be fine to our health in the long run. More investigations should be carried out before they may enter into the market soon.