HVAC School - For Techs, By Techs Recovery Best Practices w/ NAVAC
In today's podcast, Kevan Mayer from NAVAC comes talks about recovery and ways to make it work better and more safely for you.
Recovering refrigerant is better for the environment and safer for us. When designing recovery equipment, NAVAC's goal is to limit the gases we put into the atmosphere and leave the planet in better shape than we gound it. Recovery also ensures that refrigerants for phased-out refrigerants remain available.
Tanks require vacuums of at least 1000 microns, if not deeper. We also need to remember what the previous tank contents were to make sure that we only fill the tank with those refrigerants and oils. You absolutely DO NOT want to mix refrigerants. Tanks should always be up-to-date and must be certified every 5 years.
When recovering refrigerant, one of the best practices is to use a filter-drier to filter out moisture and contaminants. Reducing moisture and contamination will increase the life of your recovery machine. However, a filter-drier will not restore refrigerant back to the highest purity standards.
The speed of your recovery will depend on your vacuum, recovery machine, hose sizing, and core removal. You can also raise pressure by turning the fan on. The goal to produce speedy recoveries is to reduce tank pressure and increase system pressure.
When it comes to filling the tanks, we must pay attention to the tare weight and water capacity. However, we must understand that the water capacity is NOT the same as refrigerant capacity. We need to do a little bit of math to fill our tanks safely.
Kevan and Bryan also discuss:
- Evacuation vs. recovery
- Reclaim company tank-handling protocols
- Refrigerant mixing costs/consequences
- Using recovered refrigerant legally
- Compression ratio
- Hose sizing and manifolds
- Push-pull method
- The 80% rule
- NRDD recovery machine
Learn more about NAVAC tools at navacglobal.com.
Learn more about Refrigeration Technologies HERE.
If you have an iPhone, subscribe to the podcast HERE, and if you have an Android phone, subscribe HERE.