n Refrigeration
Controlling condenser flooding is often accomplished using two separate valves—typically ORI and ORD valves. By Greg Scrivener In the last issue, we discussed methods for controlling the rejection of heat out of condensers and identified condenser flooding as one of the most effective methods. We are going to go into some of the details about how this works, specifically related to the typical method that uses two separate valves. There are also single valve solutions that work in a similar fashion. C ondenser f looding means using refrigerant to “flood” the condenser, which takes away surface area available for condensing and effectively makes the condenser smaller. Figure 1 shows the difference between these two cases.
Figure 1: A condenser in normal operation and one partially flooded with refrigerant. Expanding our view of the system a little bit, Figure 2 shows the entire condensing portion of the system operating at 146 psig, Continued on page “41”
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The orange arrow is indicating where the differential pressure valve has been installed, while the green arrow points to the condenser flooding valve—installed on the condenser drain and hidden behind the suction line.
November/December 2021 – Plumbing & HVAC
39
