Deuterium Lamp (UV Detector) — Sales and Instrument Support

Replacement deuterium lamp for HPLC UV and PDA detectors. The D2 lamp supplies the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, roughly 190 to 400 nm; the visible range comes from a separate tungsten lamp, so a detector reading badly above 400 nm is usually not a deuterium lamp problem at all.

Working life is about 2,000 hours of use, and it is hours of use that count, not calendar age - a lamp left on overnight for convenience spends the same hours as one running analyses.

A deuterium lamp fades, it does not fail

• Baseline noise rising slowly over weeks, worst at low wavelengths.
• Baseline drift in the first hour after switch-on that was not there before.
• The detector's own energy or intensity diagnostic falling.
• Warm-up taking longer before the baseline settles.

Noise that appears suddenly rather than gradually points to the flow cell - air or contamination in the cell gives the same symptom and costs nothing to fix. Check the cell, the mobile phase mixing and the room temperature before condemning the lamp.

Record lamp hours at each preventive maintenance visit so the replacement is planned rather than discovered mid-sequence.