oil separation during refrigerant recovery.

[nevgee]

Hello everyone, I have a little problem to resolve.

During service and repair work, we often recover refrigerant from the system, in some cases we will re use the refrigerant or in other cases dispose of it accordingly. However, during this process oil can also be removed along with the refrigerant and deposited into the recovery cylinder (Tank).

Where the system is hermetic and has no sight glass for the oil level, we would not be aware of the quantity of oil removed from the system during the recovery process. Knowing the weight of the recovered material (gas and oil) would not be sufficient to indicate the ratios of those parts.

In the Auto trade, they would usually use a packaged recovery and charging station that has all of the necessary bells and whistles for them. They can see the amount of oil removed from the system and can then recharge as required.

I was wondering about this and the problems we sometimes encounter having recovered from a system, and not known just where the oil is and how much! So, I have looked high and low for a commercial piece of kit, an accessory, that we could use when on site. There doesn't appear to be one available. The only other course of action would be to assemble a bespoke rig of our own. Which is something I don't really want to do, time and costs etc.

Therefore I thought one of you peeps out there will no doubt have come across the same issues as us and have found a cute solution to it.

Have you got any suggestions?

Cheers

[nike123]

Check this:
http://www.wigam.net/it/prodotto/uni...ro-e-riciclo-0

[nevgee]

Hi Nike,
Thanks for making an effort to reply .... I have seen other machines that also do oil recovery when reclaiming gas, but I wasn't wanting to buy another machine. I use the Promax unit which has been a good performer over many years. However, I was wanting something I can add to that recovery unit.
I could get a small oil separator and assemble a rig of sorts but was hoping there might be a commercial piece of kit on the market.

[monkey spanners]

What i have done in the past, is once the system is recovered is to then recover vapour from the bottle into another bottle, this leaves the oil behind in the first one.

SRW do a little add on device for any reco machine, basically a little oil seperator and manifold to do the same job.

[al]

Check srw.co.uk, item no: Ref: 136002 oil recovery kit, bleed valve on seperator to measure quantity, pricey though at 250quid