One thing's for sure: Contaminated refrigerants from vehicle air conditioners can be explosive or easily flammable! But how can you tell if the gas is okay? And how do you safely remove it, without risk to people or the environment, if it happens to be contaminated? We'll introduce you to two methods to tackle this problem.
The likelihood of having contaminated refrigerants in air conditioners is on the rise. After all, since January 1, 2017, there are two different substances available on the market:
Due to the existence of these two refrigerants, mixing is more probable. Moreover, R 1234yf is considerably more expensive than R 134a. This might lead to the use of other unauthorized refrigerants in some markets in the future!
At the start of the service, a refrigerant analysis should always be conducted! The refrigerant can be extracted using a regular air conditioning service device only if its purity level is at least 92 or 95 percent. If it's below this value, two other methods are available.
Contaminated refrigerant can be removed from the vehicle air conditioner using dry ice.
To do this, you need to chill a recycling bottle in a dry ice bath. You use the resulting pressure difference to suck the gas mixture from the vehicle. As this process produces no sparks, there's no risk of ignition.
Dry ice (CO2) is toxic and due to its extremely low temperature of -78.5°C (-109.3°F), it can cause painful burns on unprotected parts of the body. Service can also be delayed while waiting for a specialized company to deliver the ice. A suitable recycling bottle must also be procured.
For those who want to safely and efficiently extract contaminated refrigerant mixtures, there's a new option: MAHLE, in collaboration with several car manufacturers, has developed the specialized device "Recovery Only Unit" (ROU).
With the ROU, gas mixtures can be reclaimed much more easily and safely than with the dry ice method: in about 40 minutes and almost without any residue!
The ROU is a compact device designed to reclaim refrigerants in a separate, closed-loop system. It operates without electrical components and is used in conjunction with an existing air conditioning service device.