Thread: One for the fridgies

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I had a mate years ago that worked for York International.They used to lower the centrif's miles underground into the diamond mines in South Africa.Bloody amazing,gee he had some tales to tell.
He did the majority of the York chiller commissioning in SE Qld for quite a few years,taught his son all about them,then the son decided to fly choppers in the NT herding cattle.......

If he crashes he will still have the YORK connection to fall back on. Provided he could still use his arms, legs brain etc.

Originally Posted by scarry

I have another mate that worked for Budge Ellis for years,on ammonia gear.He did his time at Wildridge and Sinclair.Now that name makes me feel old............

............

Ammonia might make a comeback if climate change mitigation and/or energy efficiency really takes off, as it doesn't need a compressor and can run on waste heat recovered from processes.

Originally Posted by scarry

Good you got them going,as i say to the boys,a good fridgie can sort anything
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I can't recall exactly what the issue was but the combo of faults had me head scratching for half an hour.
I remember bouncing it off our maintenance contract manager in Coffs, who's our resident chiller tech, he's a few years older than me and plied his time on chillers in Melbourne.
Glenn's recommendation?
Walk away!

It suddenly hit me what had happened, IIRC it was a combo of ambient, short cycling, etc so I was able to work around it and get it going.
The CAT tech thought it was short of gas with the odd fault combo.
I do remember the oil seps were full of liquid! I had negative discharge superheat on the confensers and the oil receiver sight glasses looked like milk shakes!!
The vessels were empty, all the liquid was in the confensers!

Originally Posted by RANDLOVER

Ammonia might make a comeback if climate change mitigation and/or energy efficiency really takes off, as it doesn't need a compressor and can run on waste heat recovered from processes.

Natural refrigerants are making huge inroads already, all the new supermarket low temp racks are on CO2.

The downside of ammonia is its toxicity and so I think it will always be relegated to industrial uses.

Originally Posted by 4bee

.....& a bad plumber can **** everything up.

Rick re your Dad. We really diced with death in those days Methyl Chloride, BOOM, as well as put you to sleep.
So2? How would you like to be an Asthmatic? No thanks Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzz.

I nearly died once (well once is enough) when filling SO2 bottles in a small enclosed leanto shed attached to the workshop. Made your lungs feel like they were bleeding.


Ah Happy Days.

Dad nearly went to sleep twice with Methyl, once walked into a pub cellar that was a pure methyl atmosphere.
Luckily Pop was with him and dragged him out and they walked him around the Carpark for an hour or two and wouldn't let him sleep.
If they hadn't I wouldn't be here!

Bloody crappy old Coldstream compressors!!
That pub still had a couple of old Coldstreams when I looked it after it around 1990!

A "good" South Aussie brand once made made in Unley. Kelvies were better though. When they ( Coldstream) seized up with Methyl you knew they were copper-plated internally. AND Stink! Bloody hell that combination of MC (Chloromethane) & moisture really did pong.

Pretty sure a big (old) place in Geelong went back to ammonia about 10yrs ago and halved their (massive) electricity bill.

DL

Originally Posted by 4bee

A "good" South Aussie brand once made made in Unley. Kelvies were better though. When they ( Coldstream) seized up with Methyl you knew they were copper-plated internally. AND Stink! Bloody hell that combination of MC (Chloromethane) & moisture really did pong.

I still hate Coldstreams.

What other brand of compressor did you need to lap a brand new crank seal so the bloody thing was gas tight when installed???!!!

Kelly's were 1000 times better!
The things I did and got away with on 72's and 82's you could only outdo with a Bitzer.

About 15 years ago a customer ran out of money on a new installation and had a couple of old 82's.
I had them recoed, put the biggest motor pulley on I could fit so they were at maximum speed running on R404A, POE oil, one @ -4* SST!!!
The capacity charts I had were for R12/22/502 and 404 medium temp would've been so far off the chart it was nuts, so I worked out a correction factor from 502 to 404 and extrapolated out the capacity anyway.
He needed them to work for three years just to get his cashflow going. It was a big pet food abattoir and I can't remember how many tonnes hot/day, I think 11,000kg @ body temp? so a big load.
Both units lasted exactly three years!
I replaced the MT unit with a big Lu-Ve/Maneurop condensing unit, and the LT system with a Bitzer IS.