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View Full Version : Telling R12 apart from R134a and other refrigerant



dude
25-04-2004, 02:58 AM
If you were to get partially remaining second hand refrigerant 12, how can you tell if they're being honest and selling you remaining virgin R12 or R134a or other recovered into it?

R134a and R12 have very similar pressure characteristics through out a very large temperature range and it is not easy to tell.

Anyway to do it without having access to expensive refrigerant identifier?

baker
25-04-2004, 04:18 AM
I have not tried this, but I believe that a Halide Torch, will react much more to R12 than to R134a. These were once very common and cheap.

With a halide torch, a colorless burning fuel such as propane-butane, is supplied with air through a flexible tube. The burning fuel heats a copper ring located near the hottest point of the flame to a glowing red. When the entry tube is bought close to the source of a refrigerant leak, the refrigerant will burn in the presence of the red hot copper with a green to green-blue color, depending on the intensity of the refrigerant vapor in the air.

Peter_1
25-04-2004, 12:20 PM
I have not tried this, but I believe that a Halide Torch, will react much more to R12 than to R134a. These were once very common and cheap.

With a halide torch, a colorless burning fuel such as propane-butane, is supplied with air through a flexible tube. The burning fuel heats a copper ring located near the hottest point of the flame to a glowing red. When the entry tube is bought close to the source of a refrigerant leak, the refrigerant will burn in the presence of the red hot copper with a green to green-blue color, depending on the intensity of the refrigerant vapor in the air.

Still use that torch a lot of times. In fact, if we don't find the leak, we evacuate actual gas, charge it again with R22 and pressurise further with OFN. Mostly, I find it quicker with this lamp.
It's propane in the gas botlle and it becomes indeed green. If it becomes blue, then you're right on the leak.
Very sensitive and more reliable then this new fashion beepers which allways beeps, even if there is no leak at all.

Have a funny joke about it. Were we lived wjhen me married, we had a rain water reservoir underground.
The water was pumped out with some sort of piston pump to a pressure vessel.
In that vessel, there has to be an air cushion so that the pump doesn't start each time you tap out water.
But the air can escape sometimes via small leaks like the sealing around the shaft.
So my wife called that each time she tapped water the pump started very shortly.
What I needed to do was releasing the water out of the vessel (+/- 200 litres) so that it fills with air and start the refilling and pressurise the air in it. Of course, the sealing needed also to be replaced or tightened but I had not that much time then.
So I let out some water (+/- 50l) and the intention was to pressurise it with my small air compressor. For some reason it was not at home or broken so, I took my R12 bottle and pressurised it. Pressure is pressure.
Now, my wife later in the evening took some water to boil potatoes. The fire where she cooked her meals was a propane gasfire.
Sudden, she screamed that I had to come quick. She thought that her gasfire could explode any moment. Her cooking pots where all in a black soot, the normal gently fire flamed till half of the height of her cooking pots and the flame was green and the whole kitchen was smelling enormously irritating and the water was just like sparkling soda-water.
The R12 I added was absorbed by the water and cooked out the water when she heated it up.

rccarps2
26-04-2004, 06:56 PM
Dude,

Where are you located. I have have a lab with a Gas Chromatograph in it. I can tell purity of any refrigerant down to .0001%

RC