I am looking at buying an HPLC-ECD system for the analysis of biogenic amines and other neurotransmitters. I am hoping to go down to microbore if necessary and may need to do some microdialysis in the future. I am particularly interested in the ESA coulometric detectors and their advantages/disadvantages compared to flow-by amperometric systems. I wouldn't mind going modular to save cash but it would be nice to control everything through a computer interface. I am familiar with Beckman systems but I was hoping to get some opinions on other systems re. performance, reliability etc. I am looking at the BAS and Waters systems but any other suggestions would be helpful as well. Thanks.

I think Merck make an electron capture detector. I know its available in Germany. You might try contacting them, or Hitachi.

We bought an ESA EC detector a few years ago. I asked for demos from ESA, BAS and Dionix. BAS said no to the demo invite so it came down to ESA vs Dionix. Dionix had some interesting advantages in selectivity but did awful at reproducibility. The ESA was rock solid on the reproducibility issue. We don't use that detector much but it always works. As to computer control, depends on how flexible your software is. We use Gilson's software and hardware and the Gilson software (UniPoint) along with their 606 interface box is capable of controlling RS232 enabled devices (as long as the device doesn't require handshake or parity checks) and I've done EC method development on our ESA detector using Gilson's software to control the detector without any problem.

-brian paasch
Genentech, Inc.