About the authorMike Fisher has over 35 years of experience with refrigeration systems. This background includes; service, installation, equipment manufacturing, research and development, project management, consulting engineering, system design and packaged systems.
You are currently browsing the Cold Systems blog archives for July, 2009.
If you think you may have a problem with draining liquid ammonia from your evaporative condensers, you may want to investigate the equalizing line. This piece of pipe is typically installed on top of the high pressure receiver. The termination of this pipe is usually the discharge line leading to the condensers.
What follows is a brief description of how the equalizing line works.
Much of the material used for ammonia refrigeration systems is carbon steel. Though various grades of this material are used for pressure vessel fabrication or piping there is one common problem associated with this.
When your ammonia refrigeration system exhibits a recurring problem issue, how do you solve it? Do you look for the the underlying factors that cause the component to react in the manner it did, or do you replace the component because it did not operate as intended?
For those who own and operate large ammonia refrigeration systems the consequences of this legislation may be far reaching.
Disregarding any political or environmental viewpoints on this subject one issue that should be interesting to discover is the impact of this legislation on associated energy costs, if the bill passes.
One issue that may come up during an audit is replacement of ammonia. If you have added ammonia to your refrigeration system someone may ask you:
This may put you in an untenable situation with trying to find an explanation for seemingly ordinary maintenance practices. Where might you find a potential, unnoticed source of ammonia loss?
