HVAC 113 Disposable refrigerant tanks

when you buy these refrigerant tanks they're sold in net weight how much product is inside of it and even though all these tanks look the same different refrigerant has different weights they have different quantities in it so the specific gravity's refrigerants are different so in the same exact cylinder you can overall get less refrigerant for today in a tank as you can get our 22 in a tank so if you were to go buy r22 refrigerant it comes in a net 30 pounds of refrigerant when you buy r410a it comes in a net 25 pounds of refrigerant overall we can get less refrigerant in that same tank another thing is when i get a new tank of refrigerant the first thing i like to do is put that on a scale and i write down what the gross is gross being total the net plus the weight of the tank and box itself now i know what the total weight of this is and i have a better idea as i keep track and i'm using refrigerant of how much is less if i know the total weight i can subtract my beginning weight and i know how much is left inside of that tank now why that's important is because every manufacturer uses different suppliers for their tanks there is no set weight of what a tank should be also for today refrigerant tanks since for today has a higher pressure the tanks are built thicker so it's thicker metal so this tank itself empty will weigh more than this tank weighs empty so this tank has thinner metal even though it's the same physical size this tank having a thinner metal on it it weighs less and every single manufacturer can have a different weight on that now another thing i want to point out to you it's very important now also inside of these tanks we can use vapor or liquid but r22 is a single compound refrigerant so i can take it out as vapor form or i can take it out as liquid form but our 400 series or any kind of a blend of refrigerant means there's liquid and vapor together in liquid form it's the equal amount of all the different refrigerants together like it's supposed to be and so we want to take it out as liquid so here in this tank if i had liquid here my valve is at the top so if i was to open this valve vapor is going to come out and i would get different amounts of vapor different refrigerants would be coming out at a different rate and this would cause fractionation it changes the mixture how much of one refrigerant versus another so if you're working with a 400 series refrigerator or any blend of refrigerant you want to turn the tank to where it's upside down now liquid refrigerant is going to be at the bottom where the valve is and as we're taking refrigerant out of the tank it's coming out as a liquid form and the precise mount now as we're doing this we must throttle it in little bitty burst to allow that liquid refrigerant to boil to a vapor before it gets into that compressor now most of the tanks will have little instructions on it it says this end up for liquid and this end up for vapor so it's telling you which side now r410a refrigerant is so close if you were to take it out as vapor it probably wouldn't hurt anything it's just the numbers are so close together but we still want to take it out as liquid r22 it's a pure refrigerant i can take it as liquid or vapor i typically still charge it as liquid because it's just so much faster a little bitty burst little bitty shots of refrigerant now about the color of the tanks forever these tanks were green a light colored greeners are 22 and rose colored tanks were for today but now that's changing since there's so many types of refrigerant now and the refrigerant still coming out there's not enough colors left so now the new tanks are making them all gray so you come up to somebody and you're getting used to seeing these rose colored tanks it may not be you'll now start to see the r22 and 410a and whatever the refrigerant are all going to be the same gray color because there's just so many how do you tell you're going to have to read on the bottle i have a stamp on there somewhere on there it'll have a numbers like this one's r410a or hfc 410a this one's r22 or hcfc22 when you buy refrigerant it's going to come in a tank that's typically inside of a box and we buy this refrigerant it's a one-time use only tank in other words we use the content of this tank up we put it in the refrigeration systems and what's left over the vapor that's left over still has to be recovered out this is below zero psi gauge and then we have to bust or break the tank to render it useless this is a one time only tank federal law forbids a transportation if refilled a penalty of 000 500.000 and 5 years in federal penitentiary that's serious like that's that's massive they are not kidding about that on top of that they put a check valve inside of here so you can't even put refrigerant back in refrigerant can come out but you can't get it back in because of the check valve if we also read further on the instructions it says disposal recover the residual contents of this cylinder into a dot approved cylinder prior to disposal of an empty container when emptied zero psi gauge or less leave open and dispose of the container properly dot 39 some other ones specifically said do not use as an air tank these refrigerant tanks we cut it open there is just raw metal inside of it and it's thin metal on top of that it's made for one-time use only so there's just refrigerant here in other words they pull in the vacuum and then they put pure refrigerant in it no oxygen and no moisture in there so it can't oxidize it cannot rust now once i cut this open you can see inside of here it's starting to rust because of the air the oxygen in the air and the moisture and air is causing this to rust now if you imagine you're trying to reuse this for an air tank and you're putting in here oxygen and moisture in here this tank would rust and rupture and be a safety hazard so they are very strict in not reusing these tanks so here you can see this is a fortinet tank similar except for today is a higher pressure so the tank is made a little bit thicker a little thicker tank inside of here but what's cool about it is once we cut this open we can actually take that check valve out and take a look at it and this is the check valve but it's nothing more than just simply a little ball inside of here so refrigerant can come this direction out of the tank and the ball moves out of the way the refrigerant goes around but you try to put anything back into the tank the ball gets seated back down to the bottom and it stops the flow so allows it to be one way only in that refrigerant so these tanks have been recovered and there's a giant hole so they're rendered useless now they also have this little snapdisk in there you can break this off with the screwdriver it's the weakest part of the whole entire tank so typically what we'll do is we'll put a screwdriver right on the edge of that and we snap that we break that piece open and that renders this tank useless we can't use it anymore after we have rendered this tank completely useless in other words we've recovered refrigerant and we've rendered it useless then we can send this off to be recycled or throw it away now a lot of people they like to do is make things out of them one thing i used to do is like to take these tanks and make jack-o'-lanterns out of them i'd cut the different eyes in it in the mouth in it a hole in the back for a candle and people loved it i'd paint them up and then people would buy them around halloween and they would have to worry about the jack-o'-lantern was stinking or falling apart or the candle being a fire issue it was contained i used to also take and cut these apart and make flower pots we had two different flower pots i'd put paint on the inside put some drain holes in there people would be able to hang them sometimes i'd even take and cut holes in the center to put plants in and they would hang down i can't grow plants but i was able to sell these for people who did and able to take something that was being thrown away and be able to make some money with it either way you have to recover that last little bit of refrigerant out of these tanks the next i want to point out is how they come shipped when you buy this it comes in a cardboard box a lot of people will take them immediately out of the cardboard box and put it into a metal rack that holds refrigerant i personally like to leave it inside of the cardboard boxes for a few reasons and one of those reasons is the priceless refrigerant is through the roof this tank of r22 is well over a thousand dollars now and that's a lot of money and this is very thin metal i've seen before where technicians set this down and these little feet on the bottom get damaged very easily very quickly just a little bitty pebble on the ground sticking it on there has caused these to rupture before you lose the whole entire tank so any little bit of extra protection you have between the tank and what you're working with helps this tank last longer it helps keep it protected the other thing is if they're in the back of the truck imagine hitting the brakes and this falling over and it's just going to roll around wherever the cardboard box it's more likely to stay where it's not going to roll around now in the old days i used to have a van with these refrigerant racks and we'd put the tanks in the refrigerant rack and it had a thing that held it and it kept it for the most part at an angle where it's partially upright but those tanks still took up a lot of room and what we find now is we have more refrigerant to carry than ever before especially since there's more and more replacement refrigerants so i like to just take that rack completely out and i've made a rack that holds these square bottles so now i can stack these very easily and because they're in the box they stack and have that little extra level of protection so some people though they're completely against that first thing to do is rip it off take it out i like to leave it in the box for as long as possible and eventually the box is going to dilapidate and you end up with a tank like this it doesn't have the box and that's okay but for as long as possible i like to keep it in the box my personal preference now some of these tanks specifically say this one this tank particularly says do not remove inside cylinder from the carton for transportation they're specifically said it has to be inside of its carton the cylinder by itself is not authorized for transportation without the original carton do not refill with any substance danger not suitable for compressed air and do not incinerate so they're very specific on these tanks in these cylinders so that's just some little things that will help you and protect you as you get through this new trade you

Channel: Love2HVAC with Ty Branaman

Views: 15,709

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Id: hW7Kx0noF7M

Length: 9min 52sec (592 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 08 2021