Today's video topic is an extremely important topic and it covers oil management. Now, specifically, what they're talking about today is about oil management and systems that use oil separators, which is sort of a larger commercial type of application. We see it a lot in grocery stores, but the overall understanding of how compressor, lubrication and oil works in the system is really helpful and knowing a little bit about oil separators. It's definitely something you want to know.

If you are in that heavier commercial zone. I want to give a big thank you to Westar Meyer for coming out and giving us this training. Gary Westar Meyer is actually the founder of the company and he brought along been with him, and I was shocked that he came down to help give the training. It was really excellent, very great people, and so a big thanks to Westar Meyer for being willing to give us this training.

So here we go we're talking oil management with Westar Meyer. So what we're going to do this morning is we're going to go through the different types of oil separators that are in the field that you see on supermarkets and what how they operate, how they're different some of the advantages disadvantages? How to size and talk about troubleshooting and such so again interrupt me at any point in time as we're going through this to ask questions, because I love questions. So what is our management? It's may be redundant to talk about this, but it's obviously the ability to to control the oil in a parallel rack system or a multiple compressor system, whether it be a supermarket system or maybe a condensing unit. It's got more than one compressor.

We've got some pictures up there. Some of the products that are used obviously get the oil separator oil reservoir and oil filter or strainer the pressure vent valve and the oil regulator sitting on the compressor. Those are the components that make up the oil management system and there's low pressure and high pressure systems and we're going to talk about those as well. I would probably I don't know or the most of the systems you see, the type that have the secondary or separate reservoir, or they become bine unit kind of like a husband turbo said.

What do you see in the field? Several yeah? That's what I would assume. As well, that's what we sell the most up to so you know. Why is why management required? Obviously, when you've got four pumps or six pumps, all pumping oil out into the system? If we don't get that oil back and get it to the right compressor, we're gon na end up with a compressor, that's locked out tripped on oil pressure. So it's real important for us to have a number one: an oil separator that's efficient to get most of the while I can and the number two have a place to store it in the reservoir.

I have a number three a way to distribute that back. Under pressure to each pot or each oil for each pump each each compressor, so it again that's kind of the what makes it out this is a simple system diagram you've seen these before from other companies, I'm sure, but you know what we've got is we've got The the discharge line, leaving the compressors entering the oil separator the hot gas leaving going on through the system we've got the oil flow. We've got a cutaway here of it on a separator, so we got the the sump in the bottom. That's opening returning the oil up through a filter or strainer into the oil reservoir and then being distributed back to the oil regulators or oil pots.

People call them different things and, of course, the the vent valve sitting on top of the oil reservoir. So that's what makes up the basic system and again we do manufacture all those components that go into that and again I've been on multiple. We were talking last night, multiple supermarkets troubleshooting at times, and so I'd love to hear later on some of your issues that you see - and maybe I can relate to some of those - and maybe I can talk about - maybe I'll - learn something as well. I talked just a moment ago about the different types of systems.

You've got the low pressure system, which you just said most of what you see, which is the separator reservoir or the filter or regulator, and then on the high pressure side, which is what you've got over here. You've got the separator and the reservoir together in one can so the oil is now under head pressure versus sitting over in a reservoir. That's under lower pressure. We do not sell a pressure, reducing valve, I know spoilin has that and we didn't want to reinvent the wheel.

So that's the valve that is primarily used and again husband. Turkish ads have been primarily the users of that product in the past and again it goes into an oil regulator. Oil float, whether it be a mechanical or whether it be the electronic version like a track. Soil or Emerson has a version of that as well.

The low pressure system is, in my take, have advantages, probably greater than the high pressure systems and we'll talk about that in a minute, but they're what's used in most applications, as you just alluded to, the high pressure systems can work. Well, if you have a system, that's unloading, and I don't know and you're part of the world. I know when you go up north, where you have temperatures like in our neck of the woods. You know we two weeks ago we were 95 degrees and 110 degree heat index, but we can also be 10 below in the wintertime.

So you got to build a system for the summer, but in the winter time it's not running very efficiently in your 10 % load and a high pressure system can have advantages in those situations over the low pressure system and that, if you are not, if you've Got two compressors, or one compressor on that rack running you're, not discharging a lot of oil, so you're not sending a lot of pressure through the system, so your oil reservoir can become depleted with pressure pretty quickly. A high pressure system is that photo showed where you've got it all in one can can help cover those times of low load. So we think the high pressure system and the northern climates may work better than a than a low pressure system would in those those climates in it and again, sometimes you get in a situation where the pressure vent valve has got to be changed. Maybe you need a little higher pressure on that to carry over those times if you're in the in those low load low ambient conditions.

So those that's my take on that have any: has anybody ever trouble shot or had a high-pressure system that you've you've been on? Maybe stores, let's go back real, quick so so again, this is what I would call low. Prep mean it's under it's under pressure. So it's you know it's. Maybe your typical 250 psi head pressure, but when we call low pressure so we're you know we're returning.

The oil through the float up to the reservoir and then that vent valve is bleeding the pressure off so that we've got low pressure in this oil reservoir. 10 pounds 20 pounds above suction. So we call that the low pressure system, so the only way that we get pressure to here, is when this float opens. So, if back to my analogy of in a in a low ambient condition where you're not right.

So if we've got two of these down, they're not running at all - and let's say this had an unloader on it, and only only two cylinders are running. The amount of oil that's being discharged is now reduced, so this float doesn't open very often and if we happen to hit a time that these had just called for a while before they went off, we can begin deplete the pressure in that before this replenishes it In that and that's what happens in low load, low ambient conditions correct? Yes, as what I'm saying it's probably more of a northern thing than it is a southern thing. So that's where we see going to the to this system where we're now the oil is sitting here and it's under head pressure all the time, regardless of whether one compressor is running or tend so that's the difference: yep yep non-problem, so obviously the heart of the Oil management really is the oil separator and making sure we're removing the oil at an effective rate to keep the compressors properly lubricated, and there are three types of oil separators and in my career that have been used and I've seen the evolution of those again. In my 30 years and we're going to talk through what those are so there's an management style separator there's a centrifugal style, which is what we've got on the table here and then there's a coalescing style that uses the filter like I've got in my hand.

Those are the three styles we do manufacture all three and all three have a place. All three work well just depends upon what the with the system needs and what the user or what the store needs. So we're gon na walk through that. Here's some photos or some renderings of what those are the impingement that's centrifugal again, which is what I've got on the table on the coalescing when we talk about the impingement style and we can pass this around as we talk about it, so you get an idea.

What what I'm going to be talking about so impingement separators, really, the oldest style, separator that's been used. It was used in supermarkets back in the 70s in the 80s and the 90s. There was a push for a better efficiency, so other products but came on the market. The coalescing separator came on the market, the helical separator.

I don't know if you've ever used the helical separator or not. It's got the flighting the screw piece inside that henry technology's made. I used to work for them and I actually design that separator back in the 90s, but the impingement separator again was kind of the mainstay and really what you've got going on here is you got the inlet and the outlet on the top. The screen sock that I'm passing around is really what's doing.

Most of the separation there's a baffle and the one that we brought today has the baffle on it. The baffle is in between these two screen socks and really what's happening: you're getting separation occurring by impingement on the screen by reduction of velocity and change of direction. So if you think about traveling in the car there's inertia and if you hit the brakes, you know things want to go flying forward same things happening inside. This can you've got velocity in the in the copper tubing, carrying the oil along with the refrigerant and as it enters the big can now the inertia changes and the velocity changes and the oils heavier than the refrigerant.

So it wants to travel ahead of it. We'll carry out or drop out due to the reduction of velocity, so that's one method going through the screen Sox. We can strip or impinge away some of the oil as well, and then the change of directions and the baffles there so that any of that oil leaving the inlet screen. So the outlet screen can't just short.

It's got to come and go around the baffle again. Changing direction once more, there's only really two ways that can happen, one as a manufacturing defect, which obviously we would hope that wouldn't be the case. Primarily. The reason that will happen is we've seen screen Sox or I have in my time that were plugged with debris from the system and built so much pressure drop that it ripped that spot weld apart at the bottom and correct, correct I've seen screen Sox like that.

That didn't blow apart, that have parts of reed valves in them and parts from the compressor yeah, but primarily that's usually what will happen is a pressure drop will build due to debris and blow this thing apart. The screen Sox depending upon the model they're either riveted. Some manufacturers use a band clamp to attach them, we use rivets and we use sheet metal screws just depends upon the size. Again, it's been used for years, it's about 80 % effective, so it's not real, efficient but dependent upon the system and the designer and the piping.

If you've got good piping practices, you can bring that a while back and then maybe an accumulator can be used to help meter that back into the suction, but that's how that separated work. So those three methods, reduction and velocity change and direction and stripping oil to the industry inside you'll, see these used in sizes from anything a quarter inch all the way up to three and one depending upon the system, any questions on that style separator and hit the One any other questions on those the you see, those very often yeah, there's nothing service, correct. If yeah, I have had people ask that before, and I have had once or twice that a person was able to reach their hand, must have been a small guy up inside that hole and remove a clamp. It was a different manufacturer and change it, but yeah.

It's not very possible correct in smaller sizes up through about inch and one it's in a 4-inch can and the top is it's the same header plate design. So you can actually remove that and change those if you need to or clean them, but that's only in smaller sizes, not in the big supermarket sizes. So the subtropical style is again what we've got on the table here, and this was a it's. It's kind of a tag between the husband turbine shed and the helical oil separator, and so what we're using is we're using the velocity of the gas to create a centrifugal force inside the can, so that the heavy particles due to inertia are thrown to the outside.

Inside Perimeter, if you will of the oil separator, this does not have a layer of screen on it because it was prototype and painted like this. But there will be a layer screen to wraps the screen on the inside of this shell and is the refrigerant gas. Is entering again, we create this centrifugal force and as the oil and refrigerant is passing and making this vortex, if you will that oil is being stripped by that screen and thrown to the outside and it creates a drain layer. So if the oil then can run down the inside perimeter of the all separator, if you were to - and I've done this so I can test it out.

But if we had a side glass here and here large enough that you could look through, you would actually be able to see a vortex looks like a mini tornado, spin they're, some from the force that we've created and that oil then is being thrown to the Outside and then drains down in in our system here, you'll see we we that the float is in a float chamber, it's protected. We have a top cap on it and the reason we do that is again back to that vortex. If we didn't that vortex would dance on top of the float, which would cause the float to bounce around a lot. It would provide premature, wear and cause that float to open and and return a hop more hot gas back to the reservoir than was needed, or it's not necessary.

So it isn't. It isn't a protected chamber inside that chamber and again this prototype doesn't show up because it was painted. There's actually a screen ring that's in there, because in we'll pass this around you can take a look at it. There are four holes in this sump area that allow the oil to flow into it and we actually put a screen ring up inside there to filter any particulate, because that thing catches the particulate as we talked this does not so any pieces.

Any debris is entering this can and it's gon na go to the bottom. We got to make sure we keep that from getting into our float and plugging that now at least you can take it and pull it out, change it or clean it, but we again we try to protect that. So that's a you know: it's a simple centrifugal. Separator nothing very sexy about it.

Nothing very fancy about it very important for sizing purposes which we'll talk about a little bit, because if you got back to our situation while ago, where we have maybe 10 % of our load running from what it was designed to, then the velocity is reduced. And as we reduce the velocity now we're not throwing the oil out like we thought we were and the separation efficiency will drop. So we these, if size right on the right load. In other words, if you design it for a hundred percent of load, there'll be 99 % effective at removing the oil in the system.

And do you see a lot of these? I'm assuming I mean we saw a lot of that model. So, and I know others have. I know again. Husbands got their model that they put on their stores, so the third style of oil separator that's and it started in the market, probably again mid 90s as a coalescing style and coalescing style used as a borosilicate glass, fiber filter, which is what I've got here.

I'll pass this around the filter, it works from the inside out from a flow perspective and when I say borosilicate last fibers, that sounds like a big word: it's fiberglass basically think of it like fiberglass, and so, if you think about these fibers, if taken like your Fingers and laying them on top of each other. What we do is is the oil particles and the gas flows through that the oil impinges itself or coal s's against the fibers in the filter, and so when oil is being discharged from a compressor. It's in a very small form, almost aerosol - I mean it's, it's literally that fine, and so we've got to figure out how to get those that oil bigger, so we can drop it out so as it passes through that filter, one piece of aerosol hits a it's A fiber another one hits it it continues to hit it and that coal s's and gets together until you get a big droplet that can get to the outside and drop off, and it's simple technology. It's what's been used in air compressor marcos for years, and you know again.

Supermarkets have been using these since again mid 90s and really heavily here lately the the the thing about a coalescing filter and maybe jump ahead of myself that I'm going to explain this, because I'm talking about these glass fibers, if you, if you think about velocity. So if we, we need a certain amount of velocity to make that work and here's. Why? Because if the velocity drops too low in the gas think of it like if all of us in this room went into, let's say into a football field, pull the trees. We could probably navigate through those trees and never hit one of them, but if we had a hundred times us and we're told to run through that thing, there's a good chance.

We're gon na hit a tree. That's what happens in the filter. It's it's moving! The refrigerant gas and the oil through the filter, but we're trying to get the gas through and let the oil hit the hit the tree. If you will hit the particles and drain away.

So velocity is important. But if you get too low of velocity, the oil can just kind of weave its weight through the filter and pass on and never call s but again sites correctly. These things are very efficient. Ninety-Nine percent plus there's additional cost to it.

You've got you got the flange at the top to be able to take the filter out. You got to cost the filter, you got replacement costs of replacing the filters and all those things add up the additional cost, but they're also very efficient and really do work. Well, across the spectrum of load, anybody have these in any stores your service mm-hmm. So what happens is is that all is passing through the filter from the inside out once it's the filters been designed for a certain flow, and so once the oil reaches the outside.

It's now heavy enough and is more liquid, not the aerosol form. The vision rains down the filter and just drains into this home what's important, is to have the correct, annular velocity, which is the velocity in this space here to not draw that oil off the filter and back out into the discharge. So it's real important that you've got two filter size correctly for your tans eyes. That's all things that we've manufactures just have to double check, but that's how a well gets gets off the filter.

You should always assume, obviously, that it's correctly sized not very often would it be incorrectly sized. It comes back to the loading of the store and did the manufacturer build a rack that had 15 % extra capacity for the future, so he so he put a bigger separator on to begin with and then it's up in North Dakota and it only runs full Load two weeks out of the year, and so now we're down here so those things those are, those were, the problems occur for us is in loading of us of a store as well. So if you're working on the store - that's been retrofitting breath-taking 20 % of the cooling out, but then they never change their oil separator or looked at the oil management. Then you could be walking in, they could be having oil management issues and it's because they've dropped their load down.

I take you sometimes out of their store. Hay can yes, hmm, and what we try to do when people call us is then to look at the new refrigerant check. The velocity check the flow rate make sure there doesn't need to be a change in some cases. There is in some cases - maybe not it's it's more of a case by case specific, any questions on the on the coalescing style at all.

Again, you mentioned temp right in our company, we're really the to making the coalescing separators. I know here in the South: we've got quite a few installed on public stores. The this rod here came posed some problems. If and we think we fixed all these issues now early on, I will tell you we had issues where maybe a weld here, or maybe the rod wasn't big enough for the weld wasn't done right and a service tag took the filter out installed.

The new one got up in there and all of a sudden the weld broke and the rod to come out, and we had those occur a few years ago. We've we've since fixed that and we've had, if it's in here or not, is that Jack. Okay, we had a way to retrofit those in the field easily, but anyway that has been an occurrence. The other thing that again, our separators are designed with a gasket at the bottom versus an o-ring, the other manufacturer uses an o-ring.

The o-ring is prone to blowout when the pressure drop gets high when we designed ours. I personally didn't like that. I would rather get an indication that I really need to change the filter versus the o-ring blowing out, so we use a flat gasket. Instead, that doesn't blow out - and you know if you're monitoring the store from a pressure differential, and I do believe we have that in our presentation that you'll know when it's time to change that filter all Ryan.

I don't know, maybe some of your chains do. You do do a annual PM anyway to change the filter, or do you wait till it needs to be changed? You know the problem on the filter blows and I have seen this again. Think of that, as the fiberglass, the Borisovich glass fibers, when a filter blows depending upon the size of the filter and the manufacturer of the filter. Now you got all that filter debris that has carried throughout the system.

It's probably going to be in the plug. The float - and so you know, obviously, as a manufacturer, we like to see it done from a preventative maintenance standpoint, but rather than retroactively to you, know reacting to a problem correct. No, I understand yes, correct, yeah yeah, it's what you see is life. Yes, you know.

So any other questions on the coalescing that you want to talk about, so we're gon na go through some of the advantages and disadvantages. Some of us we may have already hit on, but what, on some things we didn't of the different types. So when you, when you're looking at that impingement style, the screen shock style, you can probably see that there's not a lot of cost. It's simple to make, and so therefore it does become long cost.

It's it's reliable in the fact you don't have the filter to take you out, like we were talking on the coalescing style. It's been for been used for again back this. I think the 1970s was really the first onset of that style of separators. There's a lot of history on that and sizing is not super critical.

An old-timer once told me that the best oil separator in any system was I can about the size of a 55-gallon drum, because it was more of the reduction of velocity that he was talking about. So sizing is usually not as critical as these other two styles. The disadvantages, as I talked earlier, it's about 80 percent effective. So you know: you're got about 20 percent of your oil being discharged, it's going out into the system; it can log-in evaporators and traps and low-lying places and again pop proper piping practices.

We'll get that back. But nonetheless, we've got oil hot in the of app back to the back to the 55-gallon drum that's great, but if you're in a low ambient condition - and you got too big - of an oil separator like that - and you got air blowing across a next thing. You know you might start to convince a little refrigerant in it, so you got to be a little careful with that as well. So, on the centrifugal style that we talked about, as I mentioned, it's it's very efficient if you size it correctly to the store, and if you you know, if you don't get it too big, you can have problems, but there's no filters as we talk to replace It freakin pretty simple mechanical device.

Then you have the screen stock. So therefore, there's no pressure drop really in it. Both of these styles will have a little bit of pressure drop inherently, and you can see that you're going through the screen stock and you're going through the filter, whereas this has nothing so there's very little pressure drop, but the disadvantage is again. We got to keep it sighs.

We got to keep that velocity amped up to make sure we've got adequate oil separation, a lot of stores and about Messiah down here. Do you float head pressures down in the winter months, so you see that a lot on stores, so in parts of the country, it's a pretty known practice to float head down and when you float your head pressure down, you change your velocity and I can't tell You the number of calls I've taken in my days where a guy is having all separator issues: oil separation issues with a centrifugal or a turbine shed or a helical. Any type of separator like this and you start asking questions and you say, is your head - floated down: oh yeah yeah, it's way down and just say, go turn the head pressure up override that setting and the overrides and all the sudden all separation starts to work. So floating the head will affect the mass flow on a centrifugal style, so a little more tricky in that respect.

So some of the advantages and disadvantages again on the coalescing is it's very efficient. It's going to remove other system particulates too, which is why, on startup back to the filter, blowing out, usually on startup. What is it within the first 24 to 48 hours on startup, the manufacturer? Will almost the man that you change the filter because they mean all particulates, oxides from the all the miles and miles of tubing and such and all the braze joints. All that's going to end up in that filter, so there's usually a clean up, filter put in or just the same filter depending upon the manufacturer, and it's to remove all that particulate.

Once you get the system cleaned up and you're good to go so it'll remove all that getting disadvantages higher and cost higher pressure drop. You need to change the filter and it can rupture if you're not paying attention and then you've got a bigger issue to deal with. We've talked a little bit about sizing and you mentioned shouldn't it be sized correctly and yes should be. We do have online sizing tools and we're about to have one on earth.

That's going to be app driven to help people select oil, separators and double check sizing, but typically we always talk. It's based off a tonnage or BTUs on an impingement style. That's really what we're looking at just looking at total system load, we try to set those ratings, so they're about one to two psi. Pressure drop designed into the oil separator, as we talked about I go over.

Sizing is okay as long as you're, not in a low ambient condition, and I have seen times where that was the case and the user had to insulate the oil separator. Some. He tape around it to keep it warm because it was in a low ambient situation. But sizing of an impingement style is pretty simple.

I got 20 tons go to chart five months in the 2010 array and you pick kid you're gon na be okay on a centrifugal oil. Separator tonnage is a good place to start, but we never size off tonnage. Always have to size off of the mass flow in the system, the the velocity bike we were talking about while ago, and we have charts discharge, CFM, charts and something that we run into is we'll have manufacturers call or end-users call? Maybe a service tech like yourself call and they might have a CFM rating of the compressor. The typically compressor manufacturers rating is on the suction side, and a suction CFM is different than the discharge CFM to different numbers, and if somebody was to give us a suction, CFM rating and we size the oil separator off that it would not work.

It's not gon na be the same, so it's important for us to make sure we understand is it. We have to make sure that the number we're giving you or we're being given is the discharge of the compressor, because that's what this thing is going to see is the discharge. So we had charts in our catalogs that charts online and really what we're doing is we're looking at the mass flow of the river of the system. So if you're pumping four pounds per minute, four ton is an example at that temperature.

What is the mass flow or the velocity of the gas, and so what's how we size these? So we go to these D CFM charts and we try to make sure. Then we've got the adequate, proper velocity, as I mentioned while ago. If you, if you oversize them, we're probably going to have some problems, you can undersized them a little bit. You might increase the pressure drop a little bit, but it's better to undersized this, then oversize.

It, which is a good thing for the manufacturers of systems, because now it means I can put a little smaller can on versus you know. Maybe they can use a six-inch can today, where previous practice might have been an eight inch can so it's a little less cost for them. Our rule of thumb is about, 33 % is kind of the minimum. So if it's good for CFM that we're saying it at 3.3 range, if that all bets are off, if you go below that you're, probably not gon na get any oil separation or very little to support the store.

So I mean once again we're just reducing the the effectiveness of the oil separator by reducing the velocity. So what we're gon na ask for obviously is refrigerant, condensing Tim evap Tim then we're gon na ask. Is it sub cooled? You know they're a sub cooler on the system or not, if we know anything kind of discharged, superheat we'd like to know that not not totally critical, but we would ask and then we're gon na ask questions like okay. Is this? How many compressors is it? Is it 10? Is it a? Is it 4 6, and does the system run fully loaded all the time or is it yeah? I know that compressor number 5 never comes on that'll help us guide in the selection of the system.

So those are the key things. Evap Tim convincing 10 for Trent. What's that yeah yeah BTU load total system capacity. Obviously we need to have that.

I didn't say that I was kind of sorry about that. I miss one of the critical things yeah the size of the system, how many BTUs or how many tons do you have a total refrigeration? So what we would need to know if you had like a split system or you've got a you're running a 20 degree over here to minus 20 over here. We need to know the load of both, so it's not the suction temp, it's gon na, be the evap Tim correct. So if so, if you had three different evac temps on that one system, we need to know the load for each evap temp and what they correct, yep and then we'll pull all that together and come out with what the total mass flow is based upon.

That condition - and I know that I think our our website, sizer, I have been on in a while - allows you to do that - allows you to put in different suction groups at different temperatures and different load profiles, to be able to bring all that together into one Size does it still that's good. The kind of the rehashed a little bit of coalescing the the tonnage is a good place to start on that as well, but once again, we're really going to talk about mass flow. The filter, as we talked about go this filter, has a certain velocity or certain CFM range that it can handle. You know it's it's kind of like an air filter in the air handler.

It's usually designed those for a certain amount of air going across the filter. If you go too low, like I said earlier, you may not filter some of the debris and if you go too high, you end up with with a static pressure, drop same thing with this. So therefore we go back to D CFM. We try to understand.

We really what's the flow of discharge going through this oil filter to make sure we get it sized right. I talk to well ago about the in Europe velocity we got to make sure we've got the correct velocity around the filter. If you do undersized it, you can weaken the filter again, just by putting extra pressure drop across the most manufacturer filters. I this one is probably designed for at least a 50 psi before it'll blow apart discharge, our being pressure drop, so a 50 psi pressure drop versus a 50 psi drop pressure drop in the discharge, you're, probably going to know that before this filter blows apart.

There's other things going on: that's going to be bells and whistles going off. I I mentioned up here always asked about is a DCF Andray CFM. I talked about suction CFM, but a CFM is different. So in the air filter industry they talk about actual CFM and that's a standardized measurement at 70 degrees, Fahrenheit, and that thing doesn't work you got for us in our industry.

We got to know: what's the real flow at the real temperature, not not a standardized rating. So we always have to again make sure, if we're being given a number that we're making sure it's the true number or not, some standardized number any questions on any of those styles. For me, as far as how they work, we should or shouldn't do what you've seen little holes in the feet. Are you actually so down here? Yeah, you don't have to you know we make versions of this, where we don't have feet where people will have a clamp around it to the edge of the strut.

A lot of people will weld them. We think that all you need to do is make sure you do some sort of mounting so that you can reduce some vibration from this, so that you don't put a necessary torquing of the copper tube into the connections. So that's the purpose behind it. Larger separators, especially coalescing separators I've seen some people will build like their own base plate for mounting those and pull the base plate into the concrete or the floor of the mechanical room.

Then, though, this mouth and the separator on top and just use the pole into their base plate, those are typically the larger coalescing. Separators they're 12 inch diameter of 14 inch. The thing about the oil separator in the system back to our diagram while ago is you know it's really the first component after the compressor. So you got a lot of pulsations.

You got a lot of stuff going on, and so it's really getting the brunt of that and in some respects it acts a little bit like a muffler. There are refrigerant mufflers out there. I don't know if you ever seen one on the store or any smaller system and it's meant to dampen the pulsations from the reciprocating compressor. So this acts like that a little bit.

So it does get a lot of a lot of vibration going on and it's again it's it's best to at least provide some sort of mounting so that you can dampen some of that versus torquing the tubes and and of course, some manufacturers will use a vibration. Eliminator to try to take some of that out of the compressor as well, so we don't transfer all that energy and noise into the can any other separator questions. Ben's gon na go over some other items, I'm gon na. Let him talk for a little bit and talk about some replacement parts and then we're gon na get into some other subjects in a little bit and try to get some dialog relative to issues you've seen in stores all right.

So let's go over some replacement parts that you guys will be seeing when you're out there on service calls working on these separators. I know area. Obviously I already talked a little bit about the filters. Obviously, there's gaskets involved in that, but then I'm going to talk to something about this float that you're gon na find here on separators as well, so replacement float assemblies are found at the bottom of most of our oil separators.

We do sell oil separators where the float assembly is internal and it's built into a fitting and those are typically the smaller style oil separators, all the ones we're going to be talking about today or the serviceable style. So how this works? It's a mechanical joint as the oil drops down and goes in the four holes as Gary had mentioned. This float ball Rises here, and what we can do here in a little bit is I'll pass around. Even the separator itself, as the float ball Rises.

There's a pen inside of this brass seat, that's in there and that pen is clogging right now, a hole, that's in the brass seat. So as this float, ball Rises that pin unseats itself and then the oil goes down out of this bottom flare fitting and then goes back to the external reservoir. So it's a mechanical joint. It allows oil flowed through the copper band to the three eighths flare outlet secured in place by the the bolts and gasket, but something I want to talk about today is our new style.

Oil, separator or new style style float that we came out with a few years back. We actually wish that stood down here in Florida on a rack that was having some oil issues and, as we found out, it was actually the amount of oil flow that was coming out of the flare. It was working, but it was foaming up in the cycle. So at the time I'm everyone had assumed that the oil separator wasn't working when you see foam in a sight glass.

Typically, that means there's refrigerant in your oil, but what had happened was it was, I believe, a home brewed recipe for oil that someone had made and the velocity was so much that it was actually causing the oil itself to foam up. So what we did is we kind of went back to the drawing board. This flow, the Old South flow with the bend, had been the flow design for decades. At that point, we decided, you know it's time for us to come out with something new, something that's easier to manufacture and something that has a higher flow rate.

As you can see over here, the blue line, that's the line of the old style float in the red. Is the the new style float to show the oil flow, four pounds of pressure drop and the increase that you have on that? Not only were we able to add in flow from the bottom up here and actually this inhabit, we added a magnet to the bottom of this float. What we were seeing was is debris, was collecting in the bottom of the float assembly, specifically debris from a compressor. This brass seat here is a soft metal, so is steel and other components were getting into that flow to this getting stuck in that oarfish right there and it was causing that brass seat to prematurely wear out, and so what was happening as you were getting some Some leakage of pressure going through the flare, even when the float wasn't opening up all the way.

So we added this magnet to the bottom of the float to help collect some of that debris in the bottom. One thing that is also really nice about these float assemblies is they work in our separators and they do work in the Henry style oil separators as well. So if you, if you like the design, it's a spec design, it's something that even if it's not a Westar Meyer will separate on the rack, you can still use the float assembly, our floater next we're going to talk about replacement, filter elements. This is one of the smaller replacement filter and you guys probably won't see one this size when you're working on a supermarket application.

This is our 90 oh 51. This one can actually use in a sealed oil separator and in a service boil separator. So as Gary admission, when used in a serviceable unit, there's a top flange, so you have to take off in order to replace the filter, and then you use the differential pressure gauge to determine when the filter is contaminated in each place. Gary had mentioned a little bit about the difference between an AR filter and the timbre filter, so I want to go into that.

Maybe just a little bit more, I see you'd mention the o-ring, obviously prematurely blows out, which prematurely is probably a little bit of an understatement. I've I've seen on racks, where, on startup, the o-ring blows out on some of those oil separators to their point. It's by design for them that it blows out, so you know when to change the separator to change the filter. Basically, as Gary I mentioned, that's not really a great style to go about things.

We we again want to be premature when we are wanting to do some of these maintenance things on a on a rack and so well we what we do is we want to use that differential pressure gage to monitor the pressure drop across the filter and that Gage actually has an alarm that goes back to your CPC. So it knows: hey the filter is an alarm is reached 12 psi pressure drop it's time for you to go and change that filter before there's a blowout that 12 psi pressure drop is still well below. What the filter is capable of running, but again we want to prematurely act on some of these things, so you don't have a blowout and potentially contaminate your system not just from pieces of the filter itself, but all of the debris that's collected in this over the Last year of being in service as soon as it blows out, all of that debris is now throughout your system as well, so from a preventative standpoint, the cost of installing a pressure gauge and a service contract, and all of those things really outweigh the potential damage. You could do to a system, I believe so yeah, it's just a real light.

It's just a relay that goes back and it also has it's a it's a it's it's in here. I can show you guys, but there's a physical indication as well when you go under a rack. So even if you don't wire up the relay, if you go to a rack once every two months or six months, you can go and you can see. Oh okay, that dials on the red I need to change this filter, then the good part about our filters is obviously all of these are using the westmeyer separators, but a few years back when I was doing one of these trainings, someone had asked me: okay, so Your filters are better, but that doesn't help if I'm servicing a temporary unit, it's difficult for us to say well.

What you need to do is you need to take out the temp right, suppurating even put a westmeyer separator in, because that is that's a lot of cost, not just for you guys from a service standpoint, but also for the end-user. So what we did was we took all the best things about the Westar Meyer filter design and we put those in the sizes of the temporary filters, so all of the temporary filters as they exist today we have our own exact models of those except they're made With the designs that make our filters great, so they have a gasket on the bottom. Ours have the borosilicate glass that filters the the media instead of compared to theirs. That uses a pleated paper and that pleated paper, if you can imagine as gary, was talking about oil as it goes from the inside outside and it starts to drop down if you're using pleated paper, and then you have liquid oil happen.

The first thing you're going to have is that that paper is going to get saturated after the paper gets saturated. Of course, then you're going to have a oil drop but saturating. The paper, then, is going to cause pressure drop across the poultry and their filters are known for prematurely blowing out. So you kind of have this perfect storm of issues and I've been into multiple contractor facilities where they just take me into a back room and show me the wall of replacement filters that they have just in case there's an issue because they just never know when There's going to be a blowout, so the increasing cost of inventory of time not just on you guys, but also on your customers time as well from midnight phone call.

You have to go out there because you know the ice cream is melting in a case or something like that. Those are all things we try to push out. There's kind of these intangibles that it seems like a small little product, but it affects so much of the system if you're, if you're oil separator is not working and obviously you have a bigger filter like this size or even larger than that. That's basically feeding oil back to five different compressors and that filter were to blow out overnight.

None of those compressors are going to have oil they're all going to trip they're all going to turn off and all of your cooling is gone in the store. So it is, it is truly on a coalescing oil separator system. This is probably one of the most important parts of the system. Any questions on filters before I move on go down to your nearest shopping supply who stocks the Western Meyer filters, so it's a they.

Do they do stock our filters down they're a great store to go shop at my shameless plug there. I guess for that sizing in oil separator. This is the D CFM chart that Gary was talking about. This is the chart, that's in our catalog that shows based off of temperatures and refrigerants the D CFM that you're gon na find - and this is the D CFM, don't you say what that is like multiplier? Almost that didn't.

You would take this times the system tonnage to get your actual D CFM of the system, so this is the math behind it. All this chart is available in our catalog and on the website, but if you don't want to have to do the math like this, we also have an online calculator you can use. As Gary mentioned, we do have an app coming out. We were showing the Tropic guys last night, it's not available.

Yet probably a few weeks is called quick select right now it's just going to be available for iPhone, but on quick selects. If you hit start there's all these products, you'd be able to size oil, separators receivers for capacities, section accumulators, water, cooled, condensers, DX, chillers, just everything across the board. So when that does come out, I would suggest that it's probably something that maybe you guys install on your phone because I know is you had you had said you walk into a system. You should be able to assume that everything is sized correctly.

Hopefully, especially your guys were the last ones in that room, but if you take over a new contract and the last contractor went out of business because of malpractice or something like that, you probably should not assume that they were doing their due diligence when it came To sizing oil management, so if there is an issue in your own a call, it's really easy to exercising monoi oil separator just to make sure that that's ruled out and having a a calculator like that's a good way to do it. Is there any estimation on? Well, it will know yes, it will. We had our own developer in-house, do the work and he doesn't do Android work. So we're gon na firm that out to have someone do that for Android I've yeah I've never seen the development from an iOS to an Android app.

But I've heard it's fairly easy for those third-party companies just to take the source code and run it through a program. Basically, but we've just been focusing so hard on the iOS app right now and then we're coming out with a separate online selection software tool as well for our heat exchanger products. So those two things have kind of taken all of our effort and then once those are done, we pretty easy just to send the source code app. So hopefully, within six months of having the iOS app out, will have the Android version so troubleshooting oil management.

You walk into a Rack Room. Someone gave you a call and said that my oil separators not working or my compressor stripping on low oil. These are the things that, when we get the phone call from you guys or from a wholesaler saying that there's an issue our engineers and our salespeople. They pull this chart up right here, and this is exactly the questions that we would ask you and so having.

Some of this information on hand will help us work with you to determine kind of what the issues are hopefully rule out that it's a Western Meier issue, but then work with you to determine, even if it isn't our issue, what can we do to to help? You figure out what it is. So, as I said, number one is verify sizing in the system very easy to do. If there is an issue, it's it's something that can just easily be found right off. The bat okay well is its underside, the oil separators undersized.

So that's why I have and increase in pressure drop or maybe that's why my filter blew out okay system. Is the oil separators oversized? Maybe that's why my centripetal separators not separating anymore? It's oversized that velocity inside the can just isn't separating the oil okay. If I look back at PM's yeah, it looks like they did a remodel. They took out six six uh low temp cases.

Okay, that's probably why there's a lot of cooling? That's been taken out of the system that was originally there. So that's the first thing that we have people do number two. Is this a new problem or a reoccurring problem? So it's a good way to figure out okay, a brand new problem. What has changed since the last time you were at that sort? Okay, that means it could be a component failure.

If you look back and say: okay yeah, there was a retrofit done. The last time we were here then right now we can figure that out. If it's a reoccurring, okay, look. Does it happen at certain times of day? Does it happen during certain times of the year like here I had mentioned up in the north during the winter months, we typically get a lot more calls of oil management issues when it comes to our some triple separators.

So we know that, but from a contractor perspective you know we're trying to do that. Education. They may not know that number three. How old is the system? Is it a start-up? If it's a start-up, then you know we typically could have other issues.

Besides, just verifying exciting, because you'd hope on startup, if the manufacturer installed the oil separator at their facility that they wouldn't have to size that correctly, you would help we have seen where uninstall the oil separator was incorrect. So I guess you should not assume anything number. Four does the problem exist during full load or part load again that goes back to the subtropical style oil separator, making sure that whatever D CFM, that was sighs that if it had there's a part load that happens, that separator will still work correctly. Number five: is the oil line return hot, warm or cold? So that's the line coming out the bottom of the separator here.

There's a float as it goes through the system or again in the high pressure system. It would be coming off the reservoir, so obviously that that oil line is gon na be warm because the oil is is fairly warm as it's coming off the compressor, but you really want to see. Is there, I guess an extreme when it comes to that oil line, so if the oil line is hot, extremely hot to the touch, and obviously we want to be careful when you don't just want to go up and grab an oil line. What could potentially be happening is this float could be stuck open and you can have discharge gases going through that out line okay, so that means you may have a float issue and on the flip side, if it's cold, you may not have any oil going through It at all which, at that point, you should be able to see based on oil levels of your compressors and your reservoir, but that could be a couple different things that could obviously be your oil separators, not sized correctly so you're, not returning any oil.

More likely is that the float is is stuck closed, somehow or there's something stuck inside of that orifice and the float assembly and or if it's cold it could be that we've got some liquid refrigerant in the oil. Do some other system variables and as this is going through the little orifice and the float we're expanding that a little bit like an expansion valve and that line could be cold. I have seen that so that could be another reason. It can be cold number six.

What is the oil reservoir pressure compared to section, so this goes back to what Gary had mentioned with the the vent valve or the OCB check valve. That's on top of that reservoir that basically controls the pressure inside of the reservoir to make sure that there's a there's a differential, pushing that oil back down to the compressors. So that's something you can check number seven. What happens after defrost number eight is the head pressure lab to float, which again is what what Gary had mentioned when it comes to the DC FM? The flow rate of some of these separators number nine is: when is the last time the float was changed or you could replace float with.

You know, obviously, one of the filters as well number 10. This is one that I see quite often.