Say Hi To MIT’s Incandescent Bulb Ver 2.0; It Significantly Betters The Modern Light Bulbs.

Remember those light bulbs that used to glow at your parents’ house when you were much younger? Most of us did away with them since they were found to be energy-inefficient and some new, more efficient alternatives had turned up on the market. First came the compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and then the light emitting diode (LED) bulbs, and both emitted much more light, for much longer and consuming much less energy compared to the incandescent bulb.

But now, it seems like the incandescent bulb will be making a return, or a grand entry, if you will.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have redesigned the old light bulb to make them more efficient, even more than the LEDs. They have achieved this by surrounding the filament with a special crystal structure so that the energy which emanates from the bulb and usually gets lost as heat is reflected back for reuse. In essence, recycling of the light.

How much difference does this make to the traditional bulb’s efficiency?

“...the scientists believe that the new bulb could reach efficiency levels of 40 per cent,” reported The Telegraph. The report says traditional bulbs are 5 per cent efficient while the CFLs and LEDs have an efficiency of about 14 per cent. The difference in numbers with this new technique of ‘recycling light’ is significant.

Even besides efficiency, this version two of the incandescent bulb shows colours more naturally, thanks to its ‘colour rendering index of 100’, compared to that of the CFLs and LEDs, which measure around 80.

Principal research scientist Ivan Celanovic said, “An important feature is that our demonstrated device achieves near-ideal rendering of colours.

“That is precisely the reason why incandescent lights remained dominant for so long: their warm light has remained preferable to drab fluorescent lighting for decades.”

What’s more, this incandescent bulb is also likely to be much cheaper than the modern efficient bulbs.

Overall, it looks like we will be making a switch back to the bulb of our younger days, but this time it’ll save us much more energy and money than the older ones.