What Methods Can Be Used to Distinguish a Low-quality Refrigerant?

Inferior refrigerants will affect the performance and stability of the system, and more seriously will cause damage to the system components and compressors. The following methods can be used to distinguish whether it is a low-quality refrigerant:

1. Whether to purchase refrigerants produced by regular manufacturers through formal channels, such as refrigerants whose prices are significantly lower than the market prices, should cause a high degree of vigilance.

2. If you have the test conditions, it is recommended to check the purity and acidity of the refrigerant before using it. It is not recommended to use refrigerant whose test results are significantly lower than the industry standard. Note: The purity of qualified R22 refrigerants should be greater than 99% (the purity of high-quality refrigerant is greater than 99.8%), and the acidity (in HCL) should be less than 0.0001.

3. If you do not have the refrigerant detection conditions, it is recommended to perform a simple inspection before using the refrigerant. The simple inspection method can be:

(1) Turn the refrigerant tank upside down and release a small amount of refrigerant onto a piece of white paper. If there are obvious impurities or liquid water on the white paper, it indicates that the refrigerant is of poor quality and is not recommended;

(2) Connect the pressure gauge to test the pressure of the refrigerant bottle, and check whether the pressure in the bottle is within the normal range by comparing it with the refrigerant temperature and pressure characteristic table. If the pressure is obviously abnormal, it is not recommended. And when the refrigerant is halfway used, the pressure in the bottle can be tested again.

For a single-component refrigerant such as R22, the two measured bottle pressure values should be very close. However, for inferior refrigerants, there are usually multiple components mixed.

After the refrigerant in the bottle is used, due to the change of the composition ratio, the bottle pressure will usually be higher. If you encounter this kind of phenomenon, it is recommended to stop the refrigerant immediately and discharge the refrigerant that has been charged into the system to avoid polluting the system.

4. During the system debugging and operation stage, if the following abnormal phenomena are found:

(1) When the system's refrigeration capacity is obviously insufficient and no other abnormalities are found after inspection, attention should be paid to the refrigerant;

(2) When the filter or expansion valve of the system dryer is clogged, and the clogging is yellow-brown wax-like or black sludge-like foreign matter, pay attention to the refrigerant;

(3)High and low pressure or temperature abnormalities occur during system operation, or the system balance pressure is abnormal when the system is stopped (refer to the refrigerant temperature and pressure characteristics table), and attention should be paid to the refrigerant. When these abnormal phenomena occur, it is recommended to extract refrigerant from the system for purity testing to troubleshoot the risk of inferior refrigerant.

During this period, it is recommended to empty the refrigerant on the compressor side or release the refrigerant from the entire system to avoid potential inferior refrigerant from contacting the compressor and damaging the compressor.

Once it is discovered that the unit components or compressors fail due to chemical pollution caused by the inferior refrigerant, the units that have used the same source of refrigerant in the site (even if the unit is still working normally) need to replace the refrigerant. Because the influence of harmful chemical components in low-quality refrigerants is sometimes slow, it may cause system failure after a long period of use.

Fortech provides many types of high-quality refrigerants, and you can find the corresponding products on our website at competitive prices. If you want to know more about refrigerants after reading the above, you can contact us for a comprehensive solution.

As a professional supplier of refrigerants and fluoropolymers, we have won praise and trust from many customers with our excellent R&D technology and high-quality products. We have a professional production team and have established a complete quality inspection system, which can fully control the quality of our products. At the same time, we will provide thoughtful one-stop service and effective solution technology according to the needs of customers. If you are interested in our refrigerants, please contact us immediately!