Absorption Chillers

[chillerguru]

I had a question brought up to me. A customer forgot to close purge pump valves, vacuum drain line was open and connected to a 5 gallon bucket of old oil. all 5 gallons of oil were sucked into machine. Wondering if there is a way to remove oil from chiller , through filtering, skimming or removing charge and cleaning. Any thought would be appreciated.:troll2:

[redfive]

Five gallons of old oil??? Well we have 4 Yazaki gas fired units, 1 V80 and 3 K100. My instructor always said that that was basicaly DEATH for the machine. If your talking about pulling a vacuum and you sucked in the vacuum pump oil, because the vacuum pump shut down or lost power. The oil that would be sucked into the machine basicaly just coated vergin steel and contaminated the entire chamber and will mix with the lithium bromine. Bad news if thats the case. Maybe york and others are differant, but for a Yazaki it = scrap.

Redfive

[NewportNic]

My guess would be that you have to remove all the water and lithium-bromide, pressurize with nitrogen; then charge in water and degreaser, run your solution pumps so that it is sprayed over the bundles, remove and rinse. The water will have to be deionized at a minimum, distilled if possible. (We used to use steam condensate.) If you don't know the amount of charge you'll have to measure how much you take out, then calculate the amount of lithium.

As for your the steel, the insides of absorbers are bare steel and contain a highly corrosive salt. The reason that they don't rust is the absence of oxygen, so as you make the repairs keeping oxygen out is the critical piece. We used to open our old carriers for cleaning every couple of years and just went through a lot of nitrogen to keep the barrel positively pressurized.

I would consult the local authorized rep, as to their recommendation but I do believe repair is possible.

Klaus
Walbridge FM
"My job is to give my team a chance to win." Nolan Ryan (born January 31st 1947)

[gsxrsquid]

I'm speechless

[txvsrule]

5 gallons of oil, holy sh't.

NewportNic is right if you are lucky. Remove every last bit of lithium-bromide and water. Ask the factory for a 'recomended degreaser', nice clean rust free steam condensate is the way to go for water. Run the pumps, remove it all, do it again about 400 times or until you think all the traces of oil are gone (which they probably won't be). Recharge and pray to the Absorption gods 3 times and fire it off.

[redfive]

Boy O Boy, my job would be on the line. Dont know about other machines, but the Yazakis run around $20-30,000 for a new charge of Bromide. That was about 6 years ago too. Man that realy sucks.

Redfive

[CoolFox]

I've had units pull in a pint or so when the purge valve was left open and a flush out of the chiller worked. 5 gallons though, Ouch. Assuming the pumps didn't run while the valve was open and the oil entering, then the oil might not have circulated around the chiller coating the tubes etc, in which case the clean up might not be that bad.
But still...

[supertek65]

this is a terrible story!!!!!!!!!!!!

poor little chiller!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sad face!!!!!!!!!!!

[cperk]

I would remove all of the bromide and refrigerant water, then do a lithium hydroxide wash. Refer to service manual or call the manufacturer on how to perform this. If you have enough open top barrels to put the bromide in, oil should go to the top pretty good since the bromide is a lot heavier. Then skim it off of the top. If water has no salt in it, send it down the drain and use deionized water to replace it. I think most absorber manufacturers use the hydroxide as an additive to correct the PH when sample is abnormal. I know Trane and York do. Then I would install an oil trap to keep this from happening again, OUCH! At worst do all of these and replace the bromide with new. Expensive, but not compared to a new machine.