Short 19 - Superheat, Evaporator vs. Compressor

HVAC School - For Techs, By Techs

Bryan Orr

Training, Careers, Airconditioning, Self-improvement, Hvac, Business, Education, Refrigeration, Heating, Ac, Apprenticeship

4.8 • 985 Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2018

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In today's podcast, we cover why both compressor and evaporator superheat matter. We also address some common confusion related to each.

Evaporator and compressor superheat are two different readings that give you different indicators about the system's health. When you look at evaporator superheat, you see how far you feed boiling refrigerant into the evaporator coil. You don't want to overfeed your evaporator coil and risk flooding your compressor. However, you also don't want to starve your unit and reduce suction pressure. You'll want to stay between 5 and 14 degrees (F) of superheat at the evaporator outlet on typical A/C systems.

On TXV systems, we can control superheat at the evaporator outlet. Evaporator superheat is the reading that helps you optimize your capacity. Increasing it will decrease your evaporator capacity, as the evaporator coil won't be fed as much refrigerant. The lowest possible value is your best bet for maximizing efficiency and capacity.

Compressor superheat can be measured before the compressor. When you know that value, you can predict how hot your compressor will be when it runs. The temperature can increase from the evaporator outlet to the compressor inlet. Poor insulation in close proximity to the liquid line can be a cause; heat can transfer from the warm liquid line to the cool suction line. Our goal is to minimize heat gain in the suction line, so we want to insulate our suction lines and keep them as short as possible. However, you don't want the compressor superheat to be so low that you end up flooding the compressor.

In most cases, you should check both values to evaluate the heat gains or losses in your suction line.

Learn more about Refrigeration Technologies HERE.

If you have an iPhone, subscribe to the podcast HERE, and if you have an Android phone, subscribe HERE.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey there. This is the HVAC school podcast. Last time I checked at least. This is a short episode. This short episode is about superheat, the evaporator or at the compressor,
0:13.0	evaporator versus compressor superheat.
0:15.0	So before we get into it, though, I want to thank our sponsors
0:18.0	and first I want to clarify what sponsors are at HVAC schools.
0:21.0	Sponsors are companies who I believe in who have come alongside
0:25.0	HVAC school and help pay the bills around here. Help pay for hosting for the website and
0:30.4	for the podcasts and for all the stuff that goes into making a good podcast and a good
0:35.0	website and all that stuff. So it is very important that these companies do that.
0:38.3	These are all companies that I use and trust and have a lot of good things to say about. So to start with carrier
0:45.6	carrier.com Mitsubishi and Mitsubishi comfort.com also air oasis at
0:51.3	air oasis.com forward slash go air oasis.com forward slash go Air Oasis.com
0:55.0	forward slash go.
0:56.0	They are the indoor quality provider that we trust at Kailos and it's because they're
1:00.0	really great people who make really good products in the USA, source even their
1:04.1	components from the USA wherever they can, and we've been very very happy with their
1:08.3	products compared with some prior products that we use that we had lots of issues
1:11.4	with. So that is Air Oasis.com
1:13.6	forward slash go to get more information for your company. Also I want to thank
1:19.0	refrigeration technologies at refriggedec.com makers of Viper Cleaner, Nylog, Big Blue,
1:26.6	lots of really great products.
1:28.6	And one thing that I've noticed is that sometimes refrigeration technologies can be underrepresented at supply houses
1:35.1	because there's some really big names that I'm not going to name in the chemical industry
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bryan Orr, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Bryan Orr and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.