#startup

Tech Tips:

This tip was written by HVAC Applications and Technical Specialist Dakota Brown. Thanks, Dakota! As a technician, it was always the same old story: Are you done yet? There was always pressure from the office—either from the dispatcher, service manager, or project manager—to get the job done and get it done quickly. When I became […]

Basic Refrigeration Startup & Commissioning

Let's take a walk through the startup and commissioning procedure of a conventional or “single” refrigeration condensing unit. We’re going to start with a unit that is fully piped in and has been pressurized for leak and strength testing. For brevity, we are going to assume a basic familiarity with industry standards, company and customer […]

Residential & Rack Startup and Commissioning (Part 2)

In this episode, Bryan and Max discuss commercial supermarket startup and commissioning with comparisons to residential HVAC work. Max, who has transitioned from residential air conditioning to supermarket refrigeration, shares his insights on the unique challenges and requirements of this specialized field. The conversation begins by emphasizing the critical importance of safety in supermarket […]

Seth Biek

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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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