Technical Papers - Amalgam Lamps

Market driven growth opportunities in UV applications has required lamps with increased output. Challenged with maintaining the over-all efficiency has lead to First Light Technologies’ development of higher power amalgam lamps for water and air disinfection applications.

Amalgam LampAn amalgam is an alloy consisting of one or more metals that is combined with mercury. The primary benefit of an amalgam is that the mercury vapor pressure of an amalgam is lower than mercury alone (at the same temperature). This has allowed for lamp designs, with properly placed amalgams, to be developed with higher power levels that would otherwise be excessive (and result in lower UV intensity) with pure liquid mercury and high wall temperatures.Temp Behavior of Low Pressure Lamps Amalgam vs Mercury.JPG

First Light Technologies, Inc. has developed a complete line of amalgam lamps. Indium is the ideal metal for this lamp design due to its low vapor pressure and wide operating temperature range. Precise mercury dose and special attention to the Hg/In ratio is critical for this lamp construction.

Other alloy or combinations are available depending upon lamp design and the requirements of a specific application.

Benefits of First Light’s amalgam lamps include:

  1. Increased UV output
  2. High lamp efficiency
  3. Spectral distribution same as low pressure lamps.
  4. Increased operating temperature range.
  5. Short warm-up time
  6. Reduced equipment footprint.