| Meier
Supply
Company, Inc.
HVACR Specialists
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Refrigerant Distributors
Feed equal amounts of refrigerant through each circuit.
Refrigerant distributors are used on any DX
evaporator where multiple circuits are needed to eliminate excessive pressure drops through
the evaporator. The distributor's sole purpose is to feed equal amounts of
refrigerant through each circuit.
A solid column of liquid, supplied from the
condenser or receiver to the expansion valve, flashes into vapor resulting in a mixture at
the valve outlet. The liquid tends to move slower than the vapor and gravity will
also have an effect, separating the mixture into layers. Without a distributor
some of the evaporator circuits may receive different quantities of refrigerant, vapor, or
liquid, causing inefficiencies and other problems.
The distributor adds a second pressure drop
just after the expansion before the circuits, creating increased velocity and turbulence
of the refrigerant allowing equal portions of refrigerant into each circuit. The
distributor and distributor tubes typically compensate for over 20% of the total pressure
drop required for the low side of the system and therefore, must be considered when sizing
the system expansion valve.
Typically supplied by the original equipment
manufacturer, evaporator coil distributors allow for more efficiency by evenly distributing
the refrigerant and increasing the effective surface area of the evaporator.
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