Honeycomb air diffuser splitting after a year.

[hamish123]

We provide a specialist service in the UK by 'deep cleaning' evaporators and their associated condensate lines. Recently, we have found a number of evaporators that have honeycomb diffusers on the front of the evaporators are breaking up after less than a year's service and they are expensive to replace. Has anyone else noticed this problem? And if so, can you offer any advice.

[hookster]

Hi Hamish
I have a lot of experience with these diffusers. They are fitted to the evaporator to straighten the air off the evaporator. I would assume that these are fitted in a production / process enviroment?

They are usually aluminium honeycomb and although they have a high sheer strength they are very susceptible to corrosion attack. This is usually the result of high moisture / chlorine enviroments. The effect of cleaning products and fogging in process enviroments accelerates the corrosive effect of aluminium and if used in a high chlorine enviroment i.e process washing enviroments this will be the root cause.

There is an option to fit stainless steel honeycomb air straighteners, polypropylene or polycarbonate in place of the aluminium versions. The other option is to increase frequency of fresh water flushing of evaporators and diffusers. Do not forget that evaporator coils will also be subject to corrosive enviroment.

I usually specify poly coated fins on evaporators in these sort of enviroments.

If you would like more detail PM me!