Refrigeration apparatus
AssigneeDaikin Industries, Ltd.
InventorNobutaka Kabashima
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A compressor unit of a refrigerant circuit includes a compressor, an oil separator, an oil return pipe, an oil return valve, and a discharge temperature sensor. A refrigeration apparatus includes a controller. The controller performs a detection operation. The detection operation is an operation of decreasing the opening degree of the oil return valve and detecting whether or not gas refrigerant is flowing through the oil return pipe based on a change in the measured value by the discharge temperature sensor after the decreasing of the opening degree of the oil return valve as compared to the measured value by the discharge temperature sensor before the decreasing of the opening degree of the oil return valve.
Claims11
A refrigeration apparatus including a refrigerant circuit having a compressor unit and configured to perform a refrigeration cycle,
- the compressor unit having a compressor with a compression mechanism configured to compress and discharge refrigerant, an oil separator configured to separate refrigerating machine oil from a gas refrigerant discharged from the compressor, an oil return pipe connecting the oil separator to a suction pipe of the compressor, an oil return valve provided for the oil return pipe, and a discharge temperature sensor configured to measure a temperature of the gas refrigerant discharged from the compression mechanism,
- the refrigeration apparatus comprising:
- a controller configured to perform a detection operation of decreasing an opening degree of the oil return valve and detecting whether or not gas refrigerant is flowing through the oil return pipe based on a change in a measured value by the discharge temperature sensor after the decreasing of the opening degree of the oil return valve as compared to a measured value by the discharge temperature sensor before the decreasing of the opening degree of the oil return valve.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.