Today commercial offering is really confusing.
We have:
1) standard coil-type heaters
2) quartz heaters (a coil inserted in a open quartz tube)
3) carbon heaters
4) ceramic heaters
5) halogen lamp heaters (not to be confused with item 2)
6) ... what else ? :-)
At first one would say that they all have in common a 100% (or somewhat like that) electricity to heat conversion efficiency.
But I suspect that there is more. For example I see that the carbon heaters infrared emission spectrum peak at a longer wave length (at 3 um ?) than halogen heaters (about 1 um ?). I have read that at 3 um radiant heat is best absorbed by water, so a carbon heater should do a better job at drying.
Quartz heaters should offer double the life of halogen lamps. I am not sure, but I think coil-type heaters have the longest wave length (their light is more "reddish").
I am searching information about:
- spectrum data
- power density
- reliability and durability
- robustness
of these heating sources. And comments ... :-) For example. what's good for drying is also good for warming humans ?
R.L.Deboni