“A Strategic New Source for Economic Growth”
81 Lighting is one of the major applications that consume energy. It consumes up to 19% of global electricity in 2005 [51]. The low energy-efficient incandescent light bulbs are still in widespread use in the United States and many parts of the world today. However, today modern technologies provide opportunities to significantly reduce energy demand from lighting. Some countries have introduced rules, regulation and programmes that restrict or discourage the production and usage of incandescent light bulbs. Globally, there is gradual movement towards energy saving through the adoption of energy-efficient lightings. Energy-efficient lightings, such as compact fluorescent lights (CFL) and light emitting diodes (LED), are now gradually replacing the traditional incandescent light bulbs globally. Table 6 illustrates the energy efficiencies of various lighting lamps [52]. Table 6. Energy efficiencies of various lighting lamps [52] Type of lamp
Efficiency (lumens/watt)
Typical lifespan (hours)
Incandescent
10 – 17
750 – 2,500
Fluorescent tube lamp
30 – 100
7,000 – 24,000
Compact fluorescent lamp (CFL)
50 – 70
8,000 – 10,000
LED (phosphor based)
50 – 100
50,000
Currently, demand for fluorescent lights is growing rapidly worldwide. In the coming years, other energyefficient lighting alternatives, such as LEDs and halogen incandescent lights, will grow in usage as well and these are likely to replace fluorescent lights in certain applications. Production of fluorescent light bulbs involves phosphors made from terbium, europium and yttrium. Thus, demand for these rare earth elements is currently high in the lighting industry. In fact, there has been concern in the industry on the supply adequacy of these elements. However, as other lighting
alternatives are adopted more widely, the demand for rare earth elements from the industry may subside as these alternatives require either less or no rare earth elements in their production. For example, LEDs use much less rare earth contents than fluorescent light bulbs, while organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and halogen incandescent use no rare earths. In addition to that, demand for rare earths in the lighting industry may also be relieved through phosphor recycling in future. Thus far, attempts have been made to recycle phosphors from used light bulbs. 3.3.2 Lighting Industry: Manufacturing Malaysia currently has some lighting manufacturing plants. The major ones are operated by world industry leaders, such as Osram and Philips Lumileds. Generally, the manufacturing process of compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) is not a high-tech process. The production consists of major four stages and is highly automated [53]:
1.
Mount making
2.
Glass tube preparation (including preparation of fluorescent powder, its coating onto the glass tube, oven heating and then cooling)
3.
Base preparation
4.
Assembly
Phosphor-based LED lights are made by assembling LED light bulbs in a glass coated with phosphors. Thus, there are similarities between the manufacturing process of CFL and phosphor-based LED lights. This is currently the most popular way of making LED lighting bulbs due to simplicity of making phosphors [54][55].