Arkansas HVACR NewsMagazine May 2021

HVACR NewsMagazine May 2021

Tech News

tech tip or so. Well, we're saying it again today with good reason. Your senses could quite literally save your life if you use them to inspect a cylinder before you fill it. Before you even think about putting a tank on your truck to go to a job site, thoroughly inspect the tank. Start with a basic physical inspection. The main things you'll want to look for are dents, punctures, and rust. If you see any signs of damage or corrosion, discontinue the use of that tank. (Of course, you'll also want to make sure that your recovery tank is gray with a yellow top! The tank colors exist for a reason, and you don't want to use them all interchangeably.) Then, you'll want to inspect the valves. That's a process that requires somewhat sharper perception skills than the previous type of inspection, but you'll mostly want to look for leaky valves and signs of damage or tampering. Again, if a tank's valves appear to be damaged, leaky, or suspicious-looking, it will be best to discontinue the use of that tank. It's also a best practice to ensure that each technician tags every tank they use with their name, the date filled, and the refrigerant recovered. This practice helps prevent refrigerant mixing, which is bad for the environment and even worse for your safety. Different refrigerants have different temperature-pressure relationships, and these relationships help you figure out the proper maximum tank fill level for safety. Mixing refrigerants in a tank will make it difficult to determine safe fill levels at the temperatures you'll experience. If the company you work for already does this practice, make sure you read those tags or labels.

Recovery Tank Safety Emily Gutowski DISCLAIMER: HVAC School is NOT an official OSHA safety training resource! Although we provide safety tips in good faith, our website is not a substitute for safety training from an authorized OSHA training source. We have already touched on safety in previous tech tip features about recovery tanks, as recovering refrigerant can be a surprisingly dangerous job … and we want technicians to be safe for their sake and their customers'. This article will touch on tank condition, hydrostatic pressure buildup, and proper procedures for handling and transporting refrigerant tanks. Use your senses to inspect the tank thoroughly

It seems like we use some variation of the phrase "use your senses" in every fourth