Metal Halide
The demand for metal halide lighting has grown as it has gained recognition as a source of bright white illumination in recent years and its advantages have become increasingly evident. However, metal halide technology remained relatively unchanged since its development nearly 35 years ago until ADLT introduced a family of ground-breaking pulse start lamp/ballast systems. These systems produce a bright, white, natural-looking light and are used primarily for industrial and commercial applications, including warehouses, factories, sporting venues and landscape lighting.
Today, the sales of metal halide lamps account for seven percent of the U.S. market and six percent of the world’s $50 billion market. Increasing at a rate of 15 percent each year, the growth of this light form has rapidly surpassed that of all other lighting technologies. This trend is expected to escalate as mercury and HPS continue to decline in popularity.
By pioneering the new revolution in metal halide lighting, ADLT has been able to grow and expand its technologies to reach into different aspects of lighting, including the development of ultra-pure materials.
Uni-Form® pulse start lamps provide superior performance compared to standard metal halide lamps. Specifically, the advantages of pulse start include: more light, energy savings, safety features (i.e. shrouded lamps, less mercury and dramatically lowered UV emissions), better color uniformity, faster warm-up and restrike times and longer life.
The technology lies in its patented formed body arc tube. In this quartz molding process, each arc tube is accurately shaped to follow the actual curve of the arc stream. This elliptical shape makes a uniform temperature profile possible to ensure an even heating of the metal halides inside. The result is more light generated by the arc tube.
These innovative systems, manufactured by Venture Lighting, can be used as new lighting installations or used to retrofit mercury and HPS lighting in warehouses, factories, sporting venues, landscape lighting, etc.
Our light leadership has pioneered the development of high-purity anhydrous iodides of precise sizes for the discharge industry, dramatically improving metal halide lamp performance and making possible the development of high-speed dosing and manufacturing equipment. These concepts were extended to include sodium-mercury amalgam spheres for high-pressure sodium lamps and, within the last decade, have been applied to zinc-mercury amalgam spheres for fluorescent lamps.
We have the ability to combine two or more components into a single sphere, permitting doses of single spheres with uniform composition and mass for minimal sphere-to-sphere or lamp-to-lamp variation. This allows for the development of unique metal halide lamps, such as Venture’s DesignerColor® and Sunmaster® lines. We have also developed barium peroxide getters for extending lamp life.
Through our chemical operating unit, APL Engineered Materials, we provide nearly all of the metal halide salts used in metal halide lamps produced in the U.S. and nearly 90% of the metal halides and sodium amalgams required outside of the country. The lighting optical coatings business will be consolidated within APL to enhance our position as the world’s leader in the production of ultra-pure materials used in the manufacturing of discharge lamps.