Bio-Luminescent Light: Can It Light a Room?

[bg93]

My class is working on a bio-mimicry project. Long story. Recently we've been looking at bio-luminescent light, and specifically what Philips has been exploring. Here's the article if you're curious, but it doesn't have much to do with the question:
http://www.design.philips.com/phili...probes/projects/microbial_home/bio_light.page
and
http://www.popsci.com/technology/ar...-waste-luminous-bacteria-can-light-your-house

Now here's the dilemma, we have ideas for this, but nothing has been decided on yet. We don't necessarily have to light up a house with this, but if we could, that would probably draw more eyes.

So here's the question, can we make light via this biological process at a central spot and move it through a building to a source of emission in another room while loosing little to no energy? By what means? I feel like this is more a physics question than a biology one. Can anyone help me out?

 

[mrspeedybob]

Either fiber optics or a system of ducts with mirrored inside surfaces should do the trick.

 

[bg93]

And that would still emit light through the other side to illuminate a room? That's fantastic to hear.

 

[Michael C]

I woud imagine that fiber optics would be your best bet. You'll still lose light, though. You can get an idea of how much light you would lose from http://www.fiberoptix.com/technical/transmission-loss.html. Using the calculator on the page with typical values as given in the article below, you can see, for instance, that after sending light through a fiber optic cable 100 inches long you'd end up with about half the light you started with.