Arkansas HVACR NewsMagazine November 2025

HVACR NewsMagazine November 2025

Tech News

Glide

Traditionally, Copeland's scroll compressors for air conditioning have had model numbers starting with Z. Scroll compressors for A2Ls and other flammable refrigerants will have model numbers starting with the letter Y. We can differentiate R-32 from R-454B by the letter after Y: YA for R-454B and YP for R-32.

Glide is a feature of refrigerant blends that have different saturation temperatures. Instead of relying on a single saturation temperature for a given pressure (and vice versa), we need to rely on dew point, bubble point, or midpoint, which is all explained in THIS video. Refrigerant blends with different boiling points have some special considerations when it comes to capacity and reliability (such as preventing liquid refrigerant from flooding or slugging the compressor). Those of you who worked on R-22 systems that were replaced (or especially topped off) with R-407C probably remember the efficiency hits those units took with the new refrigerant. Even if you recovered the R-22 and replaced the mineral oil with POE, the capacity still wasn't the same. You may not have realized it, but R-410A has glide. The temperature glide is very small — around 1°F between the dew and bubble points. R-454B has a little more glide than R 410A: about 1 – 2.5°F. That's practically nothing compared to R-407C's glide, which was sometimes as high as 11.5°F, but it still requires a different compressor design than R 410A. Copeland Compressor Nomenclature and Refrigerant Compatibility The Copeland Mobile app tells you which refrigerants are compatible with the compressors in its database. You can either look up the model number directly or enter some basic information about the system (including capacity in tonnage or BTU/h, voltage, refrigerant type, etc.).

Replacement Compressors for R-410A Systems Even though there are no new R-410A residential and light commercial units being manufactured, we'll still have compressors available for years to come. The EPA's restriction is on manufacturing new complete systems, not individual parts. There are no rules stopping the manufacturing of R-410A compressors. Copeland will continue to make R-410A service models in its new LXE line, which will replace compressor models beginning with ZP (ZP**K5, ZP**KA, etc.). There are 80 LXE compressors that can replace 277 legacy compressors, so one LXE model may be a suitable replacement for multiple legacy models. These compressors will be listed as