#soldering

Tech Tips:

When brazing and soldering, we have a few things we need to accomplish to make a proper connection: We can't overheat the joint until it overheats the base metal or the flux where applicable. We must bring the entire joint above the melting temperature of the brazing alloy. Draw the alloy deep into the joint. […]

Refrigerant Leak Detection and Prevention: Epic Article

Let’s face it, refrigerant leak detection and prevention will always be important in our trade. Whether we’re dealing with leaks from corrosion or poor connections, we will always run into them in some form. We’ve touched on refrigerant leak prevention and detection quite a lot at HVAC School. Many of our articles, podcasts, and videos […]

Indirect Soldering Technique

As HVAC/R techs, we don't generally do a lot of soldering—unless you are in a shop that has embraced Stay Brite® 8 from Harris. Several aluminum repair products on the market also use an indirect soldering type technique, so this is a general and generic overview of some best practices. As always, follow the manufacturer's […]

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How to Evacuate an AC system, Full Vacuum Procedure

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HVAC School – For Techs, By Techs

Real training for HVAC ( Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration) Technicians. Including recorded tech training, interviews, diagnostics and general conversations about the trade.

In this short podcast episode, Bryan talks about the CPS Molecular Transformator and what it does.

The Molecular Transformator is a version of a tube-in-shell heat exchanger, which is a method of exchanging heat from one fluid medium to another fluid medium. Tubes containing a fluid pass through a shell containing water or glycol, and there is a heat exchange between that secondary fluid and the fluid being circulated in the tubes. In a Molecular Transformator, the fluid being circulated is recovered refrigerant, and the secondary fluid is water (in a bucket), which absorbs heat from the refrigerant and cools it down to make sure that the refrigerant enters the recovery tank as a liquid.

Refrigerant recovery machines have condensers inside of them, but they are quite small and don’t hold a lot of refrigerant by design; many recovery machines use microchannel coils. A lot of the time, the refrigerant leaving a recovery machine is a liquid-vapor mix and too high-temperature; a lot of people run a hose over the tank or put it in a bucket of ice. The “Molecular Transformator” tries to settle the vapor molecules down into a liquid; it transforms the vapor molecules using the same mechanism as a tube-in-shell heat exchanger.

The main issue is that there will be leftover refrigerant in the Molecular Transformator after recovery. However, you can mitigate this problem with ball valves and proper purging. Do so responsibly to avoid venting refrigerant.

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