Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
1
March 2014
The On-line Magazine for Interior Plantscapers, Green Walls, Green Roofs and Allied Associates
Lighting Issue LED Lights and Plant Growth Lighting and CO2 Removal by Plants Lighting Terminology Glossary
3
© 2014, Johnson Fediw Associates, The Woodlands TX. All rights reserved. If you wish to use any materials in this publication you must contact Kathy Fediw at [email protected] first for written permission. Thank you for protecting our copyrights.
5 From the Editor 6 Lighting Terms Made Easy (Almost!) by Kathy Fediw, LEED AP ID+C, CLP, CLT 10 Lighting Requirements for Photosynthesis and Carbon Dioxide Removal by Dr. Margaret Burchett, UTS, Australia 14 Why LED Lights May Be the Best Choice for Plants by George
Chan, LumiGrow, Inc. 19 Upcoming Events 23 Directory of Green Earth-Green Plants Certified Businesses
In this edition...
About the Cover:
Interiorscape Suppliers and Associations: Interested in advertising with us? Contact [email protected] to find out how you can access interiorscape buyers and save money over print publication advertising.
Feel free to forward this to your staff, colleagues and clients or subscribe them at www.I-PlantsMagazine.com. If you’d like to use one of our articles in your newsletter please contact the author. All materials in this magazine including photos are copyrighted and may not be used without written permission by the author or editor.
Daylight is best for plants—or is it? With the improve-ments made to artificial lighting, particularly LED lights, that may no longer be the case. Numerous research scien-tists are currently studying the effects of LED lights in different combinations of colors, and finding that by ma-nipulating the light we can drastically alter the appearance of certain plants, and possibly the nutritional value of cer-tain crops. Read more about lighting and its effects in this issue of I-Plants Magazine!
5
As I sit here at my desk in front of the window, taking advantage of daylighting and putting the finishing touches on this magazine, it is yet another dark and rainy day in early spring. I check my notes using “task lighting,” an old desk lamp with a tiny halogen light bulb purchased at IKEA many years ago. It burns
so hot that my cat loves to curl up and nap underneath it, indicating very poor efficacy. There is one old incandescent bulb in the ceiling light, mismatched with a newer CFL. Once the in-candescent burns out, we’ll probably replace it with an LED. In other words, we have an alphabet-soup combination of lights, and you probably do, too. There is plenty of exciting research going on right now, studying the effects of different wavelengths of light on plants, focusing primarily on LED lights in various combinations of colors. A number of you have asked me lately if LED lights are good for plants, and the answer is—yes! As long as they are providing the necessary PAR for plants, including enough microeinsteins of radiation, and is more than the LCP for those plants. Lost yet? Never fear, we include a glossary of terms used by research scientists and lighting experi-ments, which you may want to save for future reference. George Chan of LumiGrow, Inc. tells us the benefits of using LED lighting, and Dr. Margaret Burchett gives us a quick summary of her re-search on how much light plants need in order to photosynthesize and remove carbon dioxide from the air. So put on your science hat and be sure to share this issue with your clients, staff and friends in the design community. Your green plants advocate, waiting impatiently for more sunshine, Kathy Fediw, Publisher and Editor [email protected]
Please support our advertisers who make this publication possible and free to you! Click on their ads and tell your suppliers you read this magazine!
Flow and Grow Greenwalls Sturon Nursery Tropical Computers Jay Scotts Collection Wall of Life/WaterBoy by Plant-tecH2O Inc. Plant PAWS Soil Sleuth Soil Probes No Sweat! Liners Morning Dew Tropical Plants (returning next month)
Aquamate/American Granby Southwest Products: Brand X & other supplies PLANET (Professional Landcare Network) Johnson Fediw Associates Green Plants for Green Buildings Join our list of advertisers and reach interior plantscape owners, managers and sales associates throughout the world. Just CLICK HERE for your free media kit. ©2014, Johnson Fediw Associates. Feel free to forward this publication to your friends and colleagues. Contents are copyrighted and may not be sold or duplicated without written permission. Please contact Kathy Fediw at [email protected] for details.
From the Editor
6
©2014, Johnson Fediw Associates. Feel free to forward this publication to your friends and colleagues. Contents are copyrighted and may not be sold or duplicated without written permission. Please contact Kathy Fediw at [email protected] for details.
Active cooling system: system of passing a coolant (such as fan-blown air) over a light source such as LED lamps to keep them cool and improve their energy efficiency, thus allowing for brighter and more power-ful lamps to be used.
Ampere: Amps = watts ÷ volts. Approximately divide the maximum watts you expect to use by 100.
Ballast: a device that stops and starts discharge lights, such as fluorescents.
Candela: approximately equal to one foot-candle of light.
CFL: Compact Fluorescent Lights, a type of fluorescent bulb in a form to fit an incandescent lighting fixture.
By Kathy Fediw, LEED AP ID+C, CLP, CLT
The manufacture of artificial lights has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years—Thomas Edison would be amazed at how far we’ve come! Here is a quick glossary of the terms used by lighting experts and research scientists so you can understand what the heck they are talking about. You may want to keep this handy as you read some of the other arti-cles in this issue. For more detailed explanations see the references given at the end of this article.
CQS: Color Quality Scale, a quantitative measure of a light source to reproduce colors of illuminated objects, a possible substitute for the CRI.
CRI: Color Rendering Index, a quantitative measure of a light source’s ability to reproduce the colors of vari-ous objects faithfully in comparison with a natural light source.
Daylighting: the use of natural sunlight to illuminate a space; maximizing the use of sunlight with architec-tural elements such as glass walls, open spaces and clerestories.
Efficacy: ratio of light produced to energy consumed, the efficiency of a light source. The number of lumens pro-duced divided by the rate of elec-tricity consumed (lumens per watt.)
Einstein: unit of energy in one mole (6.022×1023) of photons. CFL light bulb
7
Foot-candle: illumination produced by one lumen over a 1 square foot area.
Fluorescent Lights: usually thought of as tube-shaped lights with a phosphorescent coating on the interior. Usually require a ballast.
Grow lights: marketed for plant growth, give off a cool blue/red light. Not necessarily what is best for plants, more of a marketing tool.
Halogen bulbs: typically marketed as “energy effi-cient” or “smart” light bulbs, often look like incandes-cent bulbs. A 29 watt bulb will give the same amount of light as a 40 watt incandescent bulb with a 28% en-ergy reduction, just fitting the requirements of the new EISA standards.
HID lights: High Intensity Discharge. Used mostly for large indoor areas, outdoor applications, automotive headlights and industrial use. They give off a very bright light and are more energy efficient than tradi-tional incandescent, halogen and fluorescent bulbs. They also tend to give off UV radiation that can cause injury to people and animals, so most are equipped with filters. This type of bulb includes high pressure sodium and metal halide bulbs.
HPS: High Pressure Sodium. A discharge lamp that uses sodium to produce light, tends to be yellowish in color.
Illumination: distribution of light on a horizontal sur-face.
Incandescent lights: use a filament of thin wire to cre-ate light. These give off a great deal of heat and are very inefficient by today’s standards. As of 2014 most incandescent light bulbs have been phased out of pro-duction because they cannot meet the EISA (Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007) standards which required manufacturers to improve the efficien-cy of light bulbs by a 25% reduction in their energy use.
Joule: unit of energy or heat. Equal to the energy re-quired to produce one watt for one second.
Kelvin: a measurement of the color temperature, how red, blue and green a “white” light is. Higher Kelvin temperatures (3600-5500K) are what we would con-
sider cool colors (blues, greens and violets) and lower Kelvin (2700 -3000) are what we would consider warm colors (yellows, oranges and reds.) 2700-3000K are recommended for most indoor activities.
Kilowatt: 1,000 watts (measurement of energy used.)
Lamp: term used by lighting experts for a light bulb.
LCP: Light Compensation Point: the amount of light required for a plant to manufacture enough food to compensate for the amount of food used for its meta-bolic processes. Plants need to receive more than the light compensation point in order to grow and survive.
Light Duration: the amount of time that a plant is ex-posed to uninterrupted light. Most plants require a minimum of 12 hours of uninterrupted light each day.
Fluorescent lights are still the norm in many offices.
8
LED: Light Emitting Diodes, which emit light when electricity is applied to the crystals. LED’s are consid-ered the most energy efficient type of light and are available in various wavelengths or colors. These liter-ally never burn out, although they do become less effi-cient over a long period of time. Most are valued with a lifespan (defined as losing 30% of their efficiency) of 20,000 to 100,000 hours or more.
Light Intensity: how strong the light is.
Light Quality: the wavelengths or color of light.
Lumen: measurement of the amount of visible light as perceived by the human eye. Approximately equal to one candela or one foot-candle.
Lux: one lumen per square meter, the metric version of a foot-candle. One foot-candle x 10.8 = One Lux.
Metal Halide: (MH) a discharge lamp that produces light through a mixture of vaporized mercury and met-al halides (compounds of metals with bromine or io-dine.) More efficient than mercury lamps and incan-descent lamps.
Microeinstein: unit of irradiance, equivalent to a Mi-cromole. One millionth of an Einstein, used when re-ferring to PAR.
Micromole (μmol): unit of irradiance, equivalent to a Microeinstein.
MV: Mercury Vapor, a discharge lamp that used mer-cury vapor to produce light. Produces ultraviolet radi-ation, the outer bulb offers protection.
Nm: abbreviation for nanometer, a measurement of a wavelength of light. Color is determined by the num-ber of nanometers for that particular wavelength. One nanometer = 1 millionth of a millimeter ( 1/1,000,000 of a mm) or one billionth (1/1,000,000,000) of a meter.
PAR: Photosynthetically Active Radiation, considered to be between 400 and 700 nm wavelengths of light. PAR is usually measured in microeinsteins per second per square meter (μE m−2 s−1).
Photon: an elementary particle with no mass and no electric charge. A single quantum (minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction) of light.
PPF: Photosynthetic Photon Flux (area), measured in microeinstein units. A quantum measurement of PAR.
Task lighting: light that is directed onto the workspace only, such as a desk light, as opposed to illuminating the entire room. Considered a more energy efficient use of light. μE: symbol for a microeinstein.
LED lights are available in many different colors.
9
Volt: the difference in electric potential between 2 points of a conducting wire when an electric current of one ampere dissipates one watt of power be-tween the two points. Often used when describing batteries, electrical cords or electrical wires.
Watt: a measurement of energy used, one Joule per second.
Sources: http://www.lowel.com/edu/glossary/ http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/lighting-principles-and-terms http://en.wikipedia.org Webster’s New World Dictionary 2013
Replacing Old Incandescent Light Bulbs
The US government provides these measurements to use when replacing old incandescent light bulbs. The lumens can found on the packaging. 100 watts incandescent = 1600 lumens 75 watts incandescent = 1100 lumens 60 watts incandescent = 800 lumens 40 watts incandescent = 450 lumens
Task lighting is considered more energy efficient.
10
(Editors note: this is an excerpt from an email message sent by Dr. Burkett, published with her permission.) Fraser Torpy, student Peter Irga, and I, Margaret Burkett, recently published a report on the light requirements for net carbon diox-ide removal by foliage plants in 8 indoor species. We found that the light levels in our University offices (similar to those of downtown offices) were from about 5 to 10 umol (microeinsteins) or roughly 25 to 50 Foot-candles. We found that most of the species tested could START photosynthesizing almost in the dark! (1-2 μmol/m2/sec or 5 to 10 Foot-candles). They are not shade plants for nothing. BUT we have to take into account the continuous
respiratory CO2 production of the non-green tissues (some stems, and all roots, rhizomes, etc.) and the microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) of the pot-mix. So - the plants were not usually into net positive uptake of CO2 conditions until somewhere above office illumination. In brief leaf chamber tests, most of the
species could speed up their rates of CO2 removal right up to full sunlight (~ 2,000 μmol or 10,000 FC.) This is considered to be how they maximize use of sun flecks on the bottom of the rainforest where most would live nat-urally. However, as the industry also knows, keeping indoor plants for a longish period, in a greenhouse that has highish light regime ( e.g. 60 - 80
©2014, Johnson Fediw Associates. Feel free to forward this publication to your friends and colleagues. Contents are copyrighted and may not be sold or duplicated without written permission. Please contact Kathy Fediw at [email protected] for details.
Lighting Requirements for Photosynthesis and Carbon Dioxide Removal
By Dr. Margaret Burkett, Research Scientist at University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia
11
μmol or 300 to 400 FC), is apt to yellow leaves off and make the plants look a bit poorly once they are placed indoors. So, the optimum light level for indoor plants, vertical gardens, etc., though it var-ies considerably among indi-vidual species, would ap-pear to be somewhere be-tween. My personal guess-timate would be around 20-50 μmol (100 to 250 FC.) Within the scope of our lat-est experiment (pub. 2014) we were not able to track the answer down exactly; however we did demon-strate how different species tackle the net CO2 uptake issue, and how they can 'down-scale' their photosyn-thesis when put under low-er lighting. The root-zone bacteria are the main removal agents of Volatile Organic Com-pounds, but we have also found that in hydroculture, although the rates of VOC removal are reduced slightly (although still pretty good),
the net CO2 output is a bit higher than in pot-mix, because the bacterial numbers are down somewhat in hydroculture.
The horticultural exploration of quantitative indoor plant responses to lighting is still in the pioneer stage. We would love to go the next step and get truly specific, comparative tables of light levels (with low-energy lighting) to optimize VOC and CO2 removal in a range of species, be-cause we see vertical gardens as the way of the future, both to lift the spirits of building occupants and, on a more commercial and 'globally-environmental' stage , to use live plants to reduce the air-cleansing load on HVACs, which at present chew up about a third of urban ener-gy use!
Dr. Burchett is a world-renowned research scientist and expert in the study of how plants rid the air of tox-ins. She and her team work out of UTS, Sydney, Australia.
12
14
By using LED technology, we can turn electricity into light tailored specifically for plants with no waste heat. LEDs can dramatically improve the efficiency and quality of horticultural lighting by cus-tomizing the output spectrum to where plants can use it most. Be-cause LEDs run cool, we can cre-ate productive small growing chambers, or reduce heating costs in large ones. And, because we can control a mix of different LED colors, we can even mimic the natural seasons by changing the light output spectrum over time. Imagine creating light “recipes” to match each individu-al plant’s requirements over the growth cycle.
©2014, Johnson Fediw Associates. Feel free to forward this publication to your friends and colleagues. Contents are copyrighted and may not be sold or duplicated without written permission. Please contact Kathy Fediw at [email protected] for details.
Why LED Lights May be the
Best Choice for Plants
By George Chan Sr., Marketing Manager, LumiGrow, Inc.
Given their advantages, it’s no wonder LEDs are making a big impact on the horticultural lighting world. But what exactly is an LED?
LED Basic Facts A light emitting diode is a crystal that emits light when electric cur-rent passes through it. This prop-erty was first discovered in 1907, but it took until 1962 for LEDs to become commercially available. The LED’s color depends on the elements used to make the crys-tal. For example, red LEDs contain aluminum, indium, gallium and phosphorus.
The earliest LEDs were red, fol-lowed by amber, yel-low and green. Blue LEDs eluded researchers until 1992, and full col-or (RGB) LED displays fol-lowed soon after. White
LEDs are simply blue LEDs with a yellow phosphor printed on the crystal surface — the blue light makes the phosphor glow yellow and the two colors mix to pro-duce a bluish-white.
An LED’s light output depends on its “quantum efficiency,” or the crystal’s ability to convert elec-trons (electricity) into photons (light). An LED will produce more light as more current passes through it, until self-heating at very high currents reduces its quantum efficiency. As the LED heats up, it produces less light with more current. This is why it’s very important to keep LEDs cool; cooler LEDs produce more light. Because they don’t radiate any heat, the way to cool LEDs is by mounting them to a heat sink, like a computer CPU.
LEDs Cross Brightness Barrier The LED most people are familiar with comes in a bullet-shaped 5- mm package, with a clear epoxy body holding two long leads that support the LED crystal, or “die.”
15
The 5-mm LED package is cheap to produce but not good at re-moving heat from the die, so the 5-mm LED is limited by self-heating to drive power levels be-low 20 milliwatts (0.02 watts). They’re good for panel indicators and flashlights, but they don’t produce enough light for general illumination.
LED technology ad-vanced to enable 1-watt LEDs by the late 1990s, and finally crossed the lighting-class brightness barrier in 2001 with Philips Lumileds’ intro-duction of the Luxeon family of 3-watt LEDs. These were followed by the Luxeon III family of 5-watt LEDs in 2003. Cree and Osram Opto followed suit with their X-Lamp and Dragon se-ries LEDs in the 3- to 5-watt range. Manufac-turers continue to de-velop new LED materi-als that improve quan-tum efficiency and new package designs that remove more heat from the LED die.
The light output from multi-watt LEDs is great enough to match con-ventional lighting tech-nologies in specific sce-narios. High-power LEDs now find use in archi-tectural lighting, flash-lights and daytime run-ning lights for cars.
Because each LED has a narrow beam like a small spotlight, illumi-nating a large area re-quires an array of many
LEDs—currently an expensive proposition for general lighting applications, but a justified ex-pense where energy savings, maintenance cost reduction and crop yield take precedence. The savings in electrical power and cooling costs make LED lighting a worthwhile investment for eco-conscious greenhouse and indoor growers.
Photosynthesis Basics To understand why LEDs are so well-suited to growing plants, let’s review a bit of plant biology. Then we can compare LED lighting solutions to HID lamps to deter-mine which is better for plants.
Plants perform photosynthesis using two types of chlorophyll: Chlorophyll-A, with peak response
16
at 430nm and 680nm, and Chloro-phyll-B, with peak response at 450nm and 660nm. While blue light in the mid-400nm range can activate photosynthesis, plants mostly use red light in the 650 to 700 nm range.
But pure red light produces ab-normal plants, indicating that blue light is required for proper growth. Blue light also tells the leaves to open their stomata (pores in the leaves) and allow CO2 in.
Notice that green light produces no response in the chlorophyll curves. Plants look green because their leaves reflect the green light. Human vision, however, is most sensitive to green light—an advantageous adaptation for a species that evolved in the forest.
Measurements of an air-cooled HPS (High Pressure Sodium) lamp show that more than 60 percent of the electrical energy is turned into heat and ultraviolet light, and only 32 percent of the electrical energy used is turned into light energy (MacLennan, 1994). HID (High Intensity Discharge) lamps produce light that’s useful for hu-mans, meaning that most of their light energy output is in the green part of the spectrum, with less than 10 percent of that output in the red and blue regions where plants use light.
Therefore, we see that the typical HID lamp output spectrum is actually the opposite of what plants really need. HID grow lights work only because they are using so much energy that their 10 per-cent output in the photo-synthesis region is enough
to grow plants.
Target the Spectrum Plants Need LEDs allow us to take a targeted approach to horticultural lighting by converting electricity into only the light energy that plants will use. Instead of wasting energy producing the broad emission spectrum of an HID lamp, the LEDs create very narrow emission
spectra: 20nm to 40nm spread compared to several hundred nm for an HID lamp.
Meanwhile, LEDs are very effi-cient at creating light from elec-tricity. At least 20 percent of the electrical energy put into an LED turns into light, and all this light is usable for photosynthesis. For the HPS noted above, only 10 percent of the 32 percent conversion effi-ciency is in the photosynthesis region, meaning that the HPS is only 3 percent efficient at cre-ating light usable by plants.
For more information on how LED lights are being used for growing plants, visit http://www.LumiGrow.com
18
19
UPCOMING EVENTS
April 2014 April 22, 2014: PLANET Day of Service. A day set aside for you to volunteer within your own community. For more info go to www.landcarenetwork.org
July 2014 July 12-15, 2014: AmericanHort Short Course (formerly OFA) at Columbus, OH. For more info go to www.americanhort.org July 14-18, 2014: eFIG’s National Plants at Work Week in the United Kingdom. For more info go to www.efig.eu.com July 28-29, 2014: Legislative Day on the Hill, Renewal and Remembrance at Arlington National Cemetery, Washington DC. Sponsored by PLANET. For more information go to www.landcarenetwork.org
August 2014 August 19-21, 2014: PIA@IGC, Chicago, Illinois, symposium and trade show in conjunction with the Inde-pendent Garden Center show. For more information go to www.piagrows.org
20
Workshops Just for You! ·Plant Care
·Customer Service ·Pests and Diseases
From Les Love, Foliage Concepts
One-on-one training and coaching for Managers and Supervisors
With industry leader Kathy Fediw Call 281-687-6966 or CLICK HERE to email
21
22
23
Protect the Environment in Your Green Building – Make sure your plants are cared for by a
Green Earth-Green Plants® Certified Business! IP: Interior Plantscape certified businesses
Arizona:
Plant Solutions, Inc. IP Scottsdale, AZ
Phone: (480) 585-8501
Owner: Joe Zazzera, LEED
AP,GRP
California:
Good Earth Plant Company, Inc.
IP San Diego, CA
Phone: (858) 576-9300
Owner: Jim Mumford, GRP, CLP
Growing Roots IP Long Beach, CA
Phone: (877) 475-2689
Owner: Jennifer Bermudez-Perez
McHenry Plantation, Inc. IP Costa Mesa, CA
Phone: (714)689-9992
Owner: Nicole McHenry
Steve Wolff & Associates, Inc. IP Villa Park, CA
Phone: (714)282-1155
Owner: Steve Wolff
Colorado:
Design Perfected, Inc. IP Denver, CO
Phone: 303-817-8070
Owner: Patty Seabolt
Connecticut:
Atria, Inc. IP Cheshire, CT
Phone: 203-753-6200
Owner: Bruce Crowle
Illinois:
Interior Tropical Gardens IP Huntley, IL (Chicago area)
Phone: (866) 427-5268
Owner: Mark Martin
Mimosa Interior Landscape IP Elk Grove Village, IL (Chicago
area)
Phone: (847) 545-1800
Owners: Paul Zaccarine and David
Biggus, CLP
Phillip’s Interior Plants & Dis-
plays Oak Brook, IL (Chicago area)
Phone: (630) 954-3600
Division Manager: Jean Berg
plants inc IP Chicago, IL
Phone: (773) 478-8208
Contact: Jane Rodgers
Maryland/DC area:
Interior Plantscapes, Inc. IP Laurel, MD
Phone: (301) 498-5028
Owner: Sandra Mobley
New Jersey:
Raimondi Horticultural Group,
Inc. IP Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ and New York/New
Jersey/PA areas
Phone: 201-445-1299
Owner: Chris Raimondi
North Carolina:
Foliage Concepts IP
Asheville, NC Phone: (828) 253-2888
Owner: Les Love
Pennsylvania:
Hoffman Design Group, Inc. IP Philadelphia/New York/Delaware
Phone: (800) 550-3655
Owner: Bryan Hoffman
Plantarium Living Environments,
LLC Philadelphia, PA
Phone: (215) 338-2008
Owner: Bob Bashore
South Carolina:
Foliage Concepts IP Spartanburg, SC Phone: (864) 576-9186 Owner: Les Love
Texas:
Green Oasis Plantscapes, Inc. IP San Antonio Phone: (210) 653-8900 Owner: Mike McAbery Plant Interscapes, Inc. IP Most major cities Phone: (210) 696-4003 Owner: Mike Senneff Silversand Services, Inc. IP Houston, TX
Phone: (713) 722-0336
Contact: Lisa Hathaway
Virginia:
Buckingham Greenery IP Buckingham, VA
Phone: (434) 969-4711
Owner: Connie Hom
Greatscapes & More IP Richmond, VA
Phone: (804) 657-7080
Owners: Meg and Rob Watson
Florida:
PLANTZ, Inc. IP Tampa, FL area
Phone: (813)258-1940
Owner: Steve Stanford
CLICK HERE for more information
