The Ariel LED Light Bulb Can Last Up To 40 Years

James and Jake Dyson exemplify the old saying, “Like father, like son”. Founder of the Britain-based Dyson company, Sir James is an industrial designer, best known for inventing the Cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner. Other inventions by the company include Ballbarrow, a modified wheelbarrow featuring a ball in place of the wheel and Dyson Air-Multiplier, a redesigned fan without blades. Following in his father’s footsteps, Jake Dyson has developed an incredibly futuristic lighting technology, called Ariel, that boasts an average lifespan of nearly 40 years.

Jake Dyson, 41, worked with his father for only two years before setting off on his own. Located in London, his design studio has been crafting light fixtures since 2004. After dabbling with halogen lights for some time, the company finally turned its focus on light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Known for their long-lasting service, LED bulbs possess a lifespan of up to 50,000 hours. In comparison, ordinary incandescent light bulbs last for a total of 2,000 hours, while standard CFL bulbs offer 10,000 hours of illumination. Speaking about the lighting technologies, currently available in the market, Dyson says:

LEDs have the ability to last for life – that’s why they were invented in the first place. But companies sell LED lights that only last seven years so they can sell more in seven years’ time. In some cases you can buy an LED product and six months later it’s 30% less bright – but you won’t realise that because you’re living with it… I want my product to go into spaces where the interior doesn’t want to be changed for at least 25 years: airports or high-profile buildings, for example. What airport would want a light that only lasts seven years? Is there a light out there that answers their needs? Probably not.

Instead, he wanted to design a light that lasts an entire lifetime. The result? An innovative lighting technology that can run for a minimum of 180,000 hours, i.e. 40 years of illumination at about 12 hours every day. When it comes to traditional lighting designs, one of the major problems faced by manufacturers is the damage incurred by the semiconductor chips due to overheating. The chips, which actually generate the light, also produce a substantial amount of heat, that in turn reduces the bulb’s brightness. A proper cooling system is, therefore, essential to the bulb’s health and long life.

According to Dyson, keeping the chip’s temperature under 60-degrees-centigrade actually enhances the LED’s performance. To that end, the designer has developed a highly-specialised system that works similar to the heat pipe technology used in computers, laptops and even satellites. By drawing the heat away from the LED chip, the contraption protects it from the harmful effects of overheating. Each of the copper pipes, inside the cooling system, possesses a single drop of water, which vaporizes as a result of the surrounding heat. As it traverses along the length of the pipe, the steam disperses the heat away from the chip. This technique allows the circuit temperature to be kept well under 55-degrees-centigrade. Dyson elaborates:

It’s like a big radiator. The heat comes off the pipes, is transferred through the fins, and is then dispersed into the air, so you get a continual cycle of heat being removed.

Dyson’s latest creation is an overhead light fixture, that derives its name from the first British satellite, Ariel 1, sent into space back in 1962. It featured a similar cooling technology, that was designed to extricated the heat away from the system’s microprocessors. Furthermore, the Ariel includes a set of six heat rods and multiple aluminium fins, that actually facilitate faster removal of heat. Given the bulb’s highly intricate design, the semiconductors chips would be ruined in less than six minutes, in the absence of a proper cooling system. Dyson states:

We do that by using six heat pipes which overlap in the centre of the light, and three move out down the heat sink of the wings [of which there are two]. The heat generated from that chip shoots into the heat pipes, down the wing, and a convection of air runs through the wings and cools them.

Ideal for offices, boardrooms and larger spaces, the Ariel bulb is capable of illuminating up to 8 sq m (86 sq ft) of area. Four times more powerful than ordinary LED lamps, the suspended light fixture boasts an average lifespan of 37 years. What is more, it comes equipped with ZigBee WiFi facility, that allows users to operate the device remotely. With the help of a smartphone application, the user can control and monitor the bulb’s electricity consumption. Dyson says:

Our business model is to make and design lights which last for life, not to make lights which need to be ripped out and replaced every seven years… You need three or four of our competitors’ fittings to do what one of ours is doing, and each one of their fittings is the same power as one of ours, so that’s four times more electricity, four times more installation cost, and four times the product purchased cost, so Ariel actually comes out cheaply in comparison.

Priced at $2048 (approx. £1,400), the product is available in two versions, namely Ariel Downlight and Ariel Uplight.

To know more about the project, head over to Jake Dyson’s official website.