Hybrid system development and application research for refrigerant leak inspection

Recently, record-breaking heatwaves due to global warming and abnormal weather have occurred in the summer, and sales and usage of air conditioners are rapidly increasing. Air conditioners are widely used all over the world and are recently expanding to centralized management system air conditioners. There are many customers requesting repairs due to leaking air conditioner refrigerant. However, the problem of refrigerant leakage is difficult to repair because it is difficult to quickly and accurately determine whether there is leakage on site. Air conditioner refrigerant leakage occurs in various parts such as outdoor units, indoor units, and connecting pipes, and there are cases of leakage due to minute defects, making it difficult to clearly determine whether there is leakage. Research was conducted to develop a hybrid system so that immediate judgment on these issues could be made in the field. A refrigerant leak diagnosis method was studied based on an acoustic emission sensor, and a refrigerant leak diagnosis procedure and hybrid diagnosis system were developed to detect refrigerant leak signals for each air conditioner component in consideration of the characteristics of the UV gas detector and each inspection method. It is expected that field diagnosis of air conditioning systems can be effectively applied using the procedure and diagnosis system developed through this study