Electromagnetic ballasts. What is ballast? Scheme, description

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RADIO ELECTRONICS AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
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Electromagnetic ballasts. What is ballast? Encyclopedia of radio electronics and electrical engineering

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Encyclopedia of radio electronics and electrical engineering / Ballasts for fluorescent lamps

To turn on the discharge lamps in the network, special devices are needed, called ballasts. A very small number of types of lamps can work without ballasts, and, as a rule, they are unsuitable for lighting.

Ballast - load, the function of which is not directly related to the purpose of the device. A ballast is a resistor in series with the lamp that deliberately limits the current flowing through the lamp.

For a discharge lamp to work, all that needs to be applied is a voltage, and a current must flow through it. The lamp is the so-called non-linear load with decreasing characteristic: the higher the voltage applied to the lamp, the lower the current through it, and vice versa.

Attention! When we turn on the lamp directly into the network, the current through it begins to grow like an avalanche, and the voltage between its electrodes drops! In fact, such a lamp short-circuits the network, as a result of which the network is overloaded, and the lamp goes out.

If you turn on the resistance in series with the lamp, the network will not be short-circuited, but to this resistance. There will be no overload and the circuit will work normally.

Various electrical components can act as resistance:

on direct current - resistors;
on a variable - resistors, inductors and capacitors.

The most successful ballast for LL is a choke, not a resistor or capacitor. It is advantageous to use an inductor instead of a resistor: it has a so-called reactance, on which unnecessary heat is not generated. It is dangerous to use a capacitor (it does not limit the initial current pulses either in the network or in the LL).

The industrial design of an inductor with a metal core is called a choke. This is the most common type of discharge lamp ballast. Due to the obligatory presence of a ballast in the circuit, the LL switching circuit turns out to be relatively complex compared to conventional incandescent lamps.

Hack and predictor Aviator. To include in the network of any gas discharge device, including LL, it is required current limiter, without which there will be an avalanche increase in the current in the lamp bulb and, possibly, explosion (!). Even if this does not happen, the lamp will still be instantly damaged.

Author: Koryakin-Chernyak S.L.

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