Waters UPLC ESLD bulb

[Rob G]

Hi all,

I've finished my first lamp in the UPLKC ELSD and have just replaced it....only to find the cartridge is rather expensive, about S$1000 (that's US$600).

I have removed the burnt out cartridge and found the bulb L9404, and after a websearch came up with the Gilman company. The bulbs are prices at US$25 each, which is much cheaper.

Has anyone just replaced the bulb rather than the whole cartridge? Any thoughts on whether it would be ok?

The local service guys can not tell me why there is the need to replace the whole cartridge and not just the bulb, nor will they take the old cartridge back and allow it to have a new bulb put in to allow us to reduce costs.

Anyone from Waters care to comment on this issue?

[AA]

It has to do with alignment and energy output of the the bulb to maximize the light throughput. What this really means is that you should get the same response with the new lamp/cartridge housing as the old. My advice, if you dont care about stuff like that, pull the old bulb out of the housing and put your new $25 bulb in re install the housing into the detector and move on.

[Rob G]

Thanks AA, yes, I thought it would be something like that.

Can anyone tell me how much difference the alignment and energy output will create to my chromatogram? I'm not using it for any major quntitative work, just to see if things are there.

And yes, I will probably just buy the $25 bulb and go for it!