More people and business owners are preparing their refrigeration and cooling systems to handle the summer heat. This is also increasing the requirement to learn some basic refrigeration and cooling system maintenance tips. To begin with, it’s important to identify the right refrigerant for specific equipment. This is due to the refrigerants varying for each type of equipment. R134A refrigerant is most commonly used due to its superior cooling properties and versatility, but you will also find several other variations such as R11, R12, R404a and many more.
Once you have identified the right type of refrigerant to use on your equipment you can move on to learn some other maintenance tips for your cooling equipment. R134a is also used for Automotive Air Conditioning and as Cryogen in Laser Hair Removal.
Read through the equipment’s service manual
Refrigerants don’t require changing and servicing over long period of time. In many cases the equipment will require a refrigerant top-up once a year. Check the manual to understand other parts of the equipment which may require servicing such as the fan and cooling radiators.
Ensure the R134A refrigerant does no leak
It’s also important to make sure the cooling system is not leaking any R134A refrigerant. Any leaks will lead to the lack of cooling, high refrigerant filling costs as well as environmental concerns. To ensure the cooling system is not leaking, a special refrigerant leak detector can be purchased and used especially when a firm has a large number of cooling systems.Vulnerable places to look for leaks include the filling nozzles and pipe joints. All leaks must be stopped to ensure the R134A refrigerant remains within the piping and continues cooling for as long as possible.
Service the refrigerant tubes
Refrigeration tubing plays and immense role towards the amount of cooling delivered by equipment, which means clear tubes results in more cooling. This makes it very important to have the refrigerant tubes cleaned using special cleaning agents. This clears any clogged pipes which can be hampering cooling. This requires to be done once every year or two and should be done by a professional refrigeration service.
Cooling equipment moving part maintenance
Besides simply replacing or topping off the R134A refrigerant you also need to make sure the moving parts on the equipment are serviced and lubricated. This includes electric motors and engines used to turn the refrigeration compressor pumps, as well as the compressor pump itself. There are also the cooling fans which help dispense the heat created during the refrigeration process. For this you require to use oils, greases and other lubricants to ensure the moving parts remain lubricated. These moving parts also require considerably more servicing in the form of lubrication as compared to most other parts on the refrigeration and cooling systems.
It’s very important to identify the correct type of refrigerant you need for your equipment since using the wrong one will result in effecting the equipment’s cooling capability. This is due to each refrigerants being designed to cool to certain temperature. R134A refrigerant is the most commonly used and a replacement for several other refrigerants thus making this refrigerant the most commonly used cooling refrigerant.