Converting Bus Air Conditioners to run with Hydrocarbon Refrigerants Whilst quite straight forward, there are several

areas that require special attention during the conversion process, the main one being getting the existing system as clean as possible. Due to the nature of the beast, they are inherently dirty systems, and to ensure correct, efficient operation it is important to clean it. On the systems that we have personally worked on we have disconnected the pipe work / fittings from the compressor, bridged out the filter drier and the TX valve, and (using a purpose built flushing units) we have pumped 100% liquid refrigerant round the system until it was clean. The flushing unit we designed and used had oil/debris separators and filter driers built in, with an auto purge on it. This would ensure all the debris, moisture and old oil would be removed from the system. From our experience we found that it took between 6 9 hours to fully clean the system, and we typically left the system running overnight. The liquid refrigerant used can still be used as the filters and separators removed everything that should not be there. The other are where special attention should be taken is the choice of lubricant, either very high quality mineral oils or even better our own ERG 1000 PAO synthetic lubricant, must be used. PAG and POE lubricants should never be used. Consideration to the possibility of fitting safety devices, in the way of a hydrocarbon gas sensor, linked to a alarm and/or light and a solenoid valve to shut the system down and isolate the refrigerant should a leak in the passenger department occur. In real terms having a gas leak inside the passenger compartment where it could be of a problematical level is highly unlikely, but as the safety devices are readily available and reasonably priced it would be foolhardy not to use them. With our somewhat limited experience with buses/coaches we have always found that the cabin cooled faster and the system experienced lower head pressures than when the original gas was used. We did several conversions in Singapore and in Indonesia all these systems worked exceptionally well. In fact when we were doing a demonstration conversion on some buses in Indonesia, the local engineering staff decided that they would also carry out their own test along side ours. This test they carried out was very basic, they disconnected the fuel line and put the pipe into a plastic bottle filled with 1 ltr of diesel fuel when we were carrying out our measurements they were measuring the time it took to use the complete ltr of fuel. When it was running on the original refrigerant with the air conditioning running the fuel lasted for 17 mins (the bus/coach was just on tick-over) after we changed the refrigerant to hydrocarbon, and were going through the after measurements the bus/coach ran for 22 mins. Now this is far from scientific but they proved to themselves that due to the lower head pressures, the compressor drew less power from the engine than it did when running on the original refrigerant. Realistically to do the project properly I would strongly recommend an investment in a flushing unit, which makes cleaning out of the system very easy and very efficient. You would also need to invest in sufficient refrigerant (same as currently being used) to enable the flushing unit to flood the system with liquid refrigerant. This would possible be approximately 45 kgs, however as stated above the refrigerant can be used over and over again as the flushing unit removes the undesirables.