A suction line accumulator. Most of the time you're going to hear it called just an accumulator. I want you learning it as a suction line accumulator because guess what line this accumulator goes on?
The suction line. That is exactly right. The blue line, the low pressure line. What the suction line accumulator does is it protects the compressor from any potential liquid refrigerant.
It protects the compressor from any potential liquid refrigerant. So if there was any liquid refrigerant coming in, and refrigerant is flowing in this direction, where do you think the liquid refrigerant would go? To what part of the accumulator?
Good. What part of the accumulator? Of the inside?
The bottom! Yes! Liquid is going to be heavier than the vapor and the liquid is going to drop to the bottom. Liquid will go down.
So what's going to happen is these pipes are done like this so that if there is any liquid, it's going to drop here to the bottom. What we're doing is pulling vapor off the top. So as we're running this system, we're pulling vapor from the top. If there's any liquid, it goes down to the bottom. This is a suction line accumulator.
Notice the two pipes? They're marked in and out. The in just comes down, so it just fills up into this chamber. The out pulls it from the very, very top part, loops around, and then comes out to the compressor. So that if there's any liquid, it will build up in here.
You're more likely to see these on heat pumps. And the reason you'll see them more likely on heat pumps is because as the temperature outside drops, you're more likely to end up with liquid refrigerant in there. Because you're not going to boil it all away because of the low temperature outside. So if you're going to see one, it's more likely than not going to be on a heat pump.
But you can put them on regular AC. The problem is, since this is on a suction line, it's going to be low temperature. It'll be condensation.
So you get condensation on the steel, paint will chip off, it's going to rust out and leak. But they were still an important thing. They just cost more money, take up more space. The reason the pipe comes down to the bottom like this is because we put a little orifice in here.
Because if the liquid refrigerant goes down to the bottom, what else might go down to the bottom? Oil. So what we want to do is be able to pick that oil back up so we have the oil continuously flowing.
And on the bottom you see a little funny looking piece in there? It's a little orifice. It's a very small hole, so if there is any little liquid, it's a small amount, but it lets oil, pulls that oil back in.
So it's a suction line accumulator. We were going to talk about it yesterday, but now we can add this in here today. But it's on the suction line, and it protects the compressor from any potential liquid refrigerant.
Question? No, suction lines come over to the left side. Well, all of it's a suction line, but the compressor is going to be here. So if we have our compressor...
The suction line is going to go into a compressor so it protects it. If I was going to install this on a heat pump system, where would I have to install that? Could I install that right outside the unit on the suction line coming into the heat pump? Why not? Because when the system reverses, that would be the hot gas line.
It wouldn't help protect the compressor at all, would it? So if I was going to put it on a heat pump, I would have to have it on the true suction port. Between the true suction port and the compressor, it would have to be there. There's one unit that has an accumulator out in the lab. Did you guys see it the other day?
That is our suction line accumulator. That's where it goes. That's what it is. It just helps protect the compressor from any potential liquid refrigerant.
Should there be liquid refrigerant? No, but if there is on a heat pump conditions, we want to protect it, and we can protect it by a suction line accumulator.