Chromatography Forum

Anyone have any experience with or opinions about specific deuterium lamps for the Agilent 1100 series variable wavelength detector considering things such as lifetime, performance, and cost? Doing some internet looking, the only differences I'm seeing are that some last for 1000 hours and others (e.g. Hamamatsu make) will last 2000 hours. And also, where do you buy your lamps? (Protip: being ordering bitch of the lab sucks).

I typically purchase the standard life version, rather than the long-life - which I think Agilent also supplies.

The price difference between Agilent and other suppliers isn't very much here ( about +20% ), so it's not worth the hassle of using other sources.

I think that you can use the DAD lamp in the VWD, if you change one of the VWD settings, but I've never bothered because the VWD lamp is cheaper than the DAD here, and performance may be inferior..

If your instrument is on an Agilent service contract, any problem may be accompanied by " you need a new Agilent lamp "..

Bruce Hamilton

We purchased a long life version. It is around 47% more expensive than standard version in my working place. And our detector is 1100 MWD but DAD deuterium is ok for it.

I am not sure if it can serve 47% longer than standard version (~1500hrs?) becasue we replaced it at the beginning of this year.

Thanks for the responses.

From digging around on the internet and talking to companies, I've found the following for the 1100 series detector (OEM # G1314-60100):

Agilent VWD deuterium lamp: $579 from their website, rated at 1000 hours
CTS VWD deuterium lamp (uses same Hamamatsu bulb as Agilent, but lamp is assembled by CTS): $454 from their website, rated at 2000 hours
Sonntek VWD deuterium lamp: $474 from Interlight.biz rated at 1000 hours

As for performance goes, I'm under the impression there isn't much of a performance difference between OEM and non-OEM. (Agilent's output comparison: http://www.chem.agilent.com/Library/tec ... 9312EN.pdf. Also a rep from CTS sent me a chart-I'm not sure of it's validity- comparing there lamp to the OEM lamp in the catagories of ASTM Noise, Wander, and Drift, showing that they were nearly identical).

We are using both CTS and Agilent lamps right now and everyone here seems to be apathetic about lamps. We will probably be going with CTS in the future due to its value because we are cheap and no one (here, or anywhere) seems to have any opinions on specific lamps.

Currently using replacement lamps from Agilent and CTS - haven't noticed a difference yet.