sight glass in refrigeration system should be clear

Once those filters start to plug up, 1) you reduce total air flow and 2) you change your fresh- and recirc-air balance.

“Cab pressurization testing is done with clean filters. “Typically there are two: a fresh-air filter and a recirculated air filter,” Brocx explains. They’re seldom as easy to check as the condenser, but poor filter maintenance can cut an operator’s productivity even if the day is not terribly hot. ” When the expansion valve allows line pressure on the way to the evaporator to drop, the refrigerant heads back toward gaseous state and absorbs a lot of heat from warm cab air in the evaporator to complete the change.īrocx mentions maintaining the cab-air filters as a second priority. That indicates a refrigerant leak and it’s a very bad thing. “If it does have oil on it, check to see if it’s refrigerant oil. “The main thing is to look at the condenser coil regularly,” Brocx says. Somebody has to inspect condensers and other coolers regularly, and make sure they’re clean. Staying on top of this perennial problem isn’t rocket science. Reversing fans in today’s new equipment help clear dry debris from condensers and coolers, but they’ve got limitations, particularly if there’s oil residue pasting dirt to the fins. “It catches dust, and then you’ve got an insulating dust-and-oil mix on the fins so you’re not getting good heat transfer. Oil’s a bit of a problem on its own, but it’s not alone for long in off-road conditions. “It doesn’t look so bad, but it does impact the heat rejection of that condenser quite a bit.” A hose rupture or simple leak that makes its way into the air flow can coat the coolers. “It’s pretty typical to get some hydraulic fluid or oil on the condenser,” Brocx adds. The compressor pressurizes gaseous refrigerant so that air blowing over the condenser will condense it into liquid state. Air conditioning refrigerant surfs the big heat-transfer potential at the borderline between its gaseous and liquid states. The basics are essentialĪs with most equipment-system maintenance, the most profitable AC system maintenance usually masquerade as mundane housekeeping.Īsk Robert Brocx, technical steward (his actual title) at mobile air-conditioning-system maker Red Dot Corp., how to prevent the most-common failure modes for air conditioning, and he doesn’t hesitate: “Just keeping the condenser clean and not plugged with debris, and the fins not folded over from high-pressure washing. Most of the maintenance is pretty simple, but knowing how and where refrigerant phase-shifts between gaseous and liquid states can make diagnosing problems pretty straightforward. Keeping equipment operators productive as summer comes on requires an air conditioning system maintained to harness some cool physics.

Sight glass in refrigeration system should be clear