I’m trying to upgrade my passive system from quarter inch lines to half inch lines, but I’m running into a problem at the recovery / refrigerant tank.
I use a normal carbon steel refrigerant tank for recovery and for solvent injection, so I would need that tank to have half inch fittings in order to achieve faster recovery rates with half inch steel braided lines, no? The only tanks I can find with 1/2" are ACME connections and I can’t find a 1/2" female ACME to 1/2" JIC anywhere.
I would assume (perhaps incorrectly) that every port, line, and connection has to be half inch in order to realize improved recovery speeds. Maybe some of you guys are running quarter inch flared connections on your recovery tank, but half inch valves coming off your collection base, and then stepping them down somehow?
Or maybe you guys running half inch lines aren’t using carbon steel refrigerant tanks at all?
Here are the specific questions that I have:
Do all connections need to be 1/2 inch to improve recovery times, or is it just the ones coming from the collection base?
2a. If they all need to be 1/2", are there carbon steel tanks with 1/2 inch flared fittings, is there a way to make the half-inch acme work, or are you all running something other than a carbon steel tank for your injection / recovery?
2b. If they don’t all need to be 1/2", what is the appropriate way to step down 1/2 inch connection from The Collection base to 1/4 inch connection on my recovery tank?
Let me know if I need to provide more information about my setup.
i think you really wanna focus on the ID of your smallest fittings. The thread size doesnt matter as much as the ID of the fittings, hose, valves. Your smallest ID is gonna be your bottleneck.
for this you would either need a hose with 1/2 jic on one side and 1/4 jic female on the other. or you could use a demale 1/4 jic fitting to 1/2 male pipe screwed onto a 1/2 female pipe to 1/2 jic.
Thank you guys for the quick replys.
I’m starting to think my best bet is to just upgrade my solvent tank that is designed to run the larger lines.
Killa
Thanks for pointing out that it is truly inside diameter that matters, that’s a great point because many of my fittings, despite all being 1/4" have different inside diameters.
i also think your carbon tank with the 1/4" is gonna be the bottleneck.
You can remove the valve on the collection and set up from 1/4" npt to 1/2" pretty easily and the 1/4" npt on the collection is pretty wide as far as ID. The problem your gonna run into is the 1/4" on the carbon tank.
Thanks man might have to drop the carbon steel all together. But then I’m going to want a rack mounted system, and then I’m going to need a chiller, lol. I guess it’s time to put on my big boy pants and stop playing with toys…
I hit that same problem when I was thinking of switching out to ½" lines from ¼" lines. The answer is a stainless steel tank provided by @Killa12345 and have him design you one with a lid that has ¼" injection and ½" recovery with a gauge and prv. You’re better off spending the money.
Is there a potential to see any loss in speed using a 1/2" line vs a 3/8 line? Or are you simply saying it’s superfluous?
Edit: just saw your edit
I was even thinking of running two 1/2" lines from my collection, each through their own molecular sieve and condenser coil and into the solvent tank. I suppose that would be way overkill? I thought I saw some people doing this on here.
This is absolutely corrrect
Many valves of a given size have different internal restrictions and Cv
To obtain highest flow keep the path as large as possible. Even in liquid phase a bigger hose or valve flows more fluid faster. Just like a fire hose moves a greater mass of water faster than a garden hose at a given pressure differential. But we don’t often see this in hydrocarbon systems as it seems the expansion factor of LPG limits flow in vapor phase first.
If the tank inlet is a limitation and one size smaller than plumbing, and the 3/8 valve would be a smaller restriction than fitting on tank (this is often the case) than keep condensing coil, hose, and valve all big as possible say 1/2” compression, and use a single adapter at the tank to neck down from 1/2” to say 3/8 NPT
It’s just a 10x10 collection with a 30lb carbon steel right now, so not very large.
I noticed that I’ve been getting my hot water bath much hotter than what is recommended on here, and being around 50psi during the initial part of recovery. I’ve also been using 1/4" lines, hot water bath and dry ice rice in a 5 gallon bucket with no condenser coil. So I’ve been pushing the water bath hotter and agitating both vessels to expedite the process
Sure,
I ended up buying some new hardware that was compatible with 1/2", rather than trying to plumb 1/2" fittings onto my existing hardware, with one exception.
The one exception being the lid with shower head for my material column. I took out the top 1/4" JIC fitting, and will put this fitting into the ball valve so that it can accept a 1/2" NPT to 1/2" JIC fitting ( I couldn’t find any 1/4"npt to 1/2" jic fittings).
I grabbed this lid for my 10x10 collection
I’m going to run a gauge and a ball valve on the two 1/4" fnpt, and a ball valve and a plug on the two 1/2" ports.
I upgraded to a solvent tank as well
I’ll be running the 1/4 npt as a ball valve for nitro push, the middle 1/2" liquid for injection, one of the 1/2" for vapor recovery, and the other half" I’m going to toss in this bushing to fit a 1/4" pressure gauge. I could have put another valve on there, but I didn’t need it, and I can always switch things up later if I want to.
After those main hardware considerations, it was just a matter of buying half inch steel braided lines, a half inch condenser coil, and building an inline mol sieve from glacier tanks.
I’ve never ran a mol sieve before so I’m hopping it can help me turn out a more consistent product. I’m also hoping that with the 1/2" lines, I’ll be turning out more all together!