Jebel-Ali based Middle East Light Industries Company (Melux) is a unique lamps manufacturer that combines General Electric technologies with tungsram technology. The ductile tungsram allows high-intensity light to be discharged and the lamps are vibration-proof and acknowledged to be five times more efficient than ones using traditional technology.

General manager A Augustine says the plant, commissioned in February 1999, has a capacity of 1 million lamps per year and is the only manufacturer of its kind in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Currently it uses Schott glass and Corning systems and, with 36 workers on its rolls, it plans to start an extra shift soon. The ISO 9001 quality assurance is under development.

Augustine says Melux has been exporting its products throughout the GCC states, other Asian countries and Africa and that its lighting bulbs are mounted in Bollywood and Hollywood. The official says it is also closely involved with Zee TV and supplies specialist lighting for car -crash testing. Some of its lamps were used at the Sydney Olympics.

The company's products are becoming popular because tungsram lamps reduce heat and are, therefore, safer in closed environments such as TV studios. The company hopes to do significant business throughout the Middle East in the years to come as the facility expands.

According to Augustine, Melux is particularly strong in the UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and until now the company has been dealing directly with clients, as agents have not yet been appointed. Typical customers are municipalities and oil companies.

All the lamps are manufactured to International Electro-technical Commis-sion Standards and are available as per European/American standards and with various colour temperatures.

According to details provided by Melux, the high intensity discharge (HID) lamps are the latest advancement in lighting technology. They operate at a completely different principle from incandescent (filament) lamps. An electrical discharge between electrodes causes the filter materials in the discharge tube to emit light and the light is generated directly by an arc discharge. The arc discharge may be at low or high pressure of gases and vapours. High-intensity discharge lamps operate at high pressures. Such lamps are classified as high-pressure mercury vapour lamps, high-pressure sodium vapour lamps and metal halide lamps.

The materials filled in the lamps - pure mercury or combination of mercury and sodium or hydrogen compounds of sodium, indium, thallium and dysprosium along with a rare gas filled in the discharge tube at low pressure when the arc is initiated - are efficient as they are vapourised by heat from electric discharge in the rare gases. Some minutes after starting, both light output and colour will vary until lamp stability is achieved, the company's fact sheet states.

"These lamps produce enormous quantity of light with great intensity, rendering it suitable for indoor and outdoor lighting. The high intensity and compactness makes them ideal for large area lighting for streets, roads, highways, the airport, storage yards, shipping yards, railway stations and the sports field," says Melux.

Providing additional details, the company says HID lamps are suitable for operation from AC mains only. Any discharge lamp has a negative co-efficient of resistance, necessitating the use of current-limiting devices, often externally. However, blended light lamps have a built-in filament that limits current and improves the colour of light.

HID lamps operate at the rated voltage, current frequency and ambience. An inductive choke coil is used as ballast to act as a current-limiting device.

Melux tells customers that the ballast must be connected to the phase conductor from the main supply. The wiring connection from the ballast should be provided to the centre of the cap. Care has to be taken to ensure that the operation is at the normal mains voltage. Incorrect ballast or significant fluctuations of the mains voltage can be detrimental to lamp life while distorting the colour of the light. Sudden fluctuations of the supply voltage beyond specified limits can result in arc extinction.

"High-pressure mercury vapour lamps and blended light lamps do not need any extraordinary starting device. Starters or igniters that can provide voltage pulses up to 1.5 to 5KV are required for metal halide lamps and high-pressure sodium lamps. In this range of lamps, once the arc has been initiated the starting device will no longer provide voltage pulses," says Melux.

"High-pressure sodium vapour lamps are highly efficient and the most economic light sources, employing the most modern state-of-the-art technology in converting electrical energy into light. They are best applied in areas where visibility and economy are major considerations without the need for better colour rendition. Low wattage ratings can replace incandescent lamps in a variety of outdoor applications as in gateways, entrances, garages and garden walkways. Higher wattage lamps are advantageous in lighting streets, squares, roundabouts, tunnels bridges, roads, highways and pedestrian crossings.

"High-pressure mercury vapour lamps are ideal for indoor and outdoor lighting. These can be operated in any burning position. They have long life and high reliability in all conditions of operations with low sensitivity to fluctuations of mains supply voltage. Since these lamps are compact compared to tubular fluorescent lamps, they are convenient to use for many applications," says the company.

It also describes blended light lamps (high-pressure mercury, ellipsoidal, coated with ballast filament) that, it says, are high-pressure mercury vapour lamps with in-built filament to act as ballast. They feature a glass bulb with yttrium vanadate phosphor coating. A tungsten filament connected in a series with the discharge tube provides current limitation and no control gear is required.

"These lamps can be operated directly on the AC mains, provided the voltage is correct. The reddish light radiated by the tungsten filament improves the colour-rendering properties of the source. In addition, light is emitted immediately the lamps are switched on and their life is many times longer than that of the incandescent lamps that they replace with luminous efficacies higher by some 35 to 66 per cent. They are advantageous and economical in retrofitting existing lighting systems equipped originally with incandescent lamps," customers are told.

About multi-halide lamps, which are also called multivapour lamps, the company says they are high-pressure, high-intensity discharge light sources similar to high-pressure mercury vapour lamps and that they produce a light spectrum closest to sunlight.

"The quartz arc tube contains mercury together with sodium and halides of sodium, thallium, indium and dysprosium. To obtain further improvements in colour, halides of rare earth metals are used. The principle of operation is that each metallic vapour participating in the electric discharge produces its own colour spectrum covering an entire visible range. It is therefore necessary to add multiple halides or metal and when this is done they are called metal halide lamps or multi vapour lamps," it adds.