Without a ballast to control this there would be too much current for the light to take and it would burn out and possibly even catch fire.
Purpose of capacitor in fluorescent lamp.
Probably not such a big deal when you consider individual lamps in homes but when you start looking at hundreds or thousands aggregate of homes or.
Fluorescent starters are used in several types of fluorescent lights.
A fluorescent light does not have the usual glowing filament of an incandescent bulb but instead contains a mercury vapor that gives off ultraviolet light when ionized.
As a result large installations of such lamps suffer a poor power factor and resultant voltage drop.
Illumination types of lamps.
Since there is a coil in the ballast the capacitor is used to bring the power factor back towards unity.
Question is the function of capacitor across the supply to the fluorescent tube is primari ly to options are a stabilize the arc b reduce the starting current c improve the supply power factor d reduce the noise e leave your comments or download question paper.
A familiar and widely used example is the inductive ballast used in fluorescent lamps to limit the current through the tube which would otherwise rise to a destructive level due to the negative differential resistance of the tube s voltage current characteristic.
An electrical ballast is a device placed in series with a load to limit the amount of current in an electrical circuit.
Fluorescent lamps form an inductive load on the ac mains supply.
Adding a capacitor to each lamp corrects the power factor bringing it back close to unity 1 0.
The capacitor is in most common fluorescent lamp circuits is for power factor correction.