High Pressure Sodium Vapour Lamp Ignitor

Low pressure and high pressure low pressure sodium lamps are highly efficient electrical light sources but their yellow light restricts applications to outdoor lighting such as street lamps where they are widely used.

High pressure sodium vapour lamp ignitor.

These types of lights are commonly found outside. The lamp turns sky blue as the xenon lights. High pressure sodium lights are used for illuminating large outdoor areas. They are also commonly found in an indoor garden setting.

Only high pressure sodium and pulse start metal halide fixtures have ignitors. Sodium bulbs can last up to 20 000 hours. This pulse starts an arc through the xenon gas. Two varieties of such lamps exist.

High pressure sodium lamp hps lamp. A sodium vapor lamp is a gas discharge lamp that uses sodium in an excited state to produce light at a characteristic wavelength near 589 nm. They emit bright yellow light. An ignitor is used when high pressure is necessary to strike an arc through certain materials and get the temperature up very quickly inside it.

Neither mercury vapor nor standard metal halide fixtures need ignitors to strike an arc through the lamp. A high pressure sodium ballast is responsible for regulating the pressure in light fixtures that use high pressure sodium gas to produce the light. There is an ignitor built into the ballast which sends a pulse of high voltage energy through the arc tube. Typically these lights are used on sides of industrial buildings and in some street lamps.

This evenings experimentation consists of attempting to start a high pressure sodium hps lamp with a microwave oven transformer at 2kv. They are used for things such as security lighting. The sodium vapor strikes an arc over 240 c.