Historical Background And Rationale Of Xenon Lights
Xenon is an odorless, heavy gas that occurs naturally in the Earth’s atmosphere. Xenon was discovered in England in the late 1800′s. The gas was discovered as a residual element left over from the evaporation of liquid air. The name Xenon comes from the Greek word for foreigner or strange. Some 30 years later new technologies in photography led to the invention of the strobe light. The strobe light leads to the invention of the xenon flash lamp. It was discovered that when an electrical current is passed through a tube filled with xenon gas it produces light. It was described as a flash of light or an arc.
Xenon lights are used in precision optical instruments because the light can be precisely focused. The majority of movie projectors use xenon lights because of their ability to project a beam of light. Xenon lights are described as daylight quality. The lighting technology is becoming popular for vehicle light kits. In 1991 headlamps using xenon gas where introduced. Pure xenon gas does not have a high lumen output, so other materials such as salts of sodium are added to increase the output.
Xenon gas burns hot so special precautions in large operations must be taken to insure the gas does not become overheated. Many large applications will use water to cool the gas; the water circulates in jackets to dissipate the heat. In smaller non-commercial applications, the xenon gas is mixed with other elements making it burn cooler and produce more lumen output.
Xenon can be obtained for commercial use by the separation of air into oxygen and nitrogen. The separation process produces liquid oxygen that contains small amounts of xenon.