32 Service and Maintenance
Zero in on the ‘impossible to find’ leaks
With refrigerants constantly changing, future proof refrigerant leak detectors are quickly becoming the most powerful tool in an engineer’s armoury, says Scott Davies, UK sales manager at Javac.
he last thing a refrigeration and air conditioning company needs is for an engineer to be spending days on end searching pipework trying to find a pinhole leak on a system.
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The first thing they do need is the most accurate and sensitive leak detectors for pinpointing the smallest of leaks using either heated diode or infrared sensors. Every engineer will encounter the situation when a VRF with a 50m pipe run has a small pinhole leak – these tend to occur at about 4.30pm on a Friday! If you use the right leak detection technology and understand its uses this repair can be closed off within the hour. If a VRF system is showing signs of refrigerant loss, you remove the panels and introduce the leak detector inside of the unit and immediately the leak detector will alarm with a high pitched tone. Some engineers may think the leak detector has now done its job and they revert to the old school way of spraying bubble up products all over the pipework and condenser to find the small leak. This process will eventually work but can take hours to pinpoint a leak which is inaudible, and cause a big clean up job for the apprentice.
Bubble up products will also never find a leak as small as 5g per year. This will only be detected with electronic leak detectors. Leak detectors such as the Javac Tek- Mate and D-Tek Select use heated diode and infrared sensor technology which is designed to zero out/re-calibrate to the refrigerant quantity within its surroundings or immediate environment.
To use this function there is nothing which has to change with
how the leak detector is set up, simply switch it on and learn what the alarm tone is telling you.
When the leak detector is first introduced to a leaking system and refrigerant is detected, the tone will go from intermittent to a high pitched alarm tone.
Keep the leak detector in the area where it has alarmed, and the detector will then go back to its intermittent tone, this means the detector has zeroed/re-calibrated itself and will not alarm again at the quantity at which it has first detected.
We now move the detector to an area where you think the leak is and if the detector alarms then follow the same procedure, leave it in place until it re- calibrates itself back to the intermittent tone.
Another way to use this process is to only turn the leak detector on where you know the leak has occurred.
To use a different scenario, if a leak is present on an integral cabinet, introduce the leak detector inside the cabinet while it is turned off.
When you turn it on the leak detector will now be calibrating
itself
to its surroundings. When the leak detector enters its intermittent tone, it will only detect leaks at a lower rate which make the pinpointing process simple. These key features will work with all refrigerants including hydrocarbons detected with the Javac Gas-Mate. R32 refrigerant is quickly approaching, and this is classed as mildly flammable. Anything leaking which is mildly flammable should be found as quickly as possible.
Following the previously explained procedures to pinpoint leaks, the Gas-Mate will work exactly the same as the Tek-Mate and D-Tek-Select. If you follow this process a leak can be found within five minutes. The zero out/re-calibration function on heated diode and infrared sensors can pinpoint a leak which could be leaking at 5g per year, which is undetectable with any other process.
If you follow these simple guidelines, spending hours on site searching for leaks will be a thing of the past. Invest in the correct technology and spend time learning its features.
ACR News May 2015
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www.acr-news.com
Gas Mate Leak Detector.
D-Tek-Select.
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