A chiller owner wants to know which of the remaining tubes are likely to fail next rather than waiting for the next flood. Which test gives that information?
Correct Answer
B) An eddy current test of the tubes, which measures wall thinning and cracks along each tube
Eddy current testing runs a probe down each tube and reads how the tube wall disturbs an electromagnetic field. It maps thinning, pitting and cracking along the length of every tube, which lets the owner decide whether to plug a handful or retube the machine. The other methods answer different questions: a hydrostatic test only proves the bundle holds today, and a refrigerant analysis reports damage that has already happened.
Why This Is the Correct Answer
Eddy current inspection is the standard condition survey for chiller tube bundles. It is done with the waterboxes off, tube by tube, and it produces a map of which tubes are thinning and by how much. That map is what turns a retube decision from a guess into a budget item, and it identifies weak tubes before they open into the refrigerant side.
Why the Other Options Are Wrong
Option A: A hydrostatic test of the water side, which shows the pressure at which the weakest tube bursts
A hydrostatic test loads the bundle until something fails. It confirms integrity at a pressure but says nothing about how much wall is left in the tubes that survived.
Option C: A refrigerant analysis of the charge, which shows how much water has already entered the shell
Refrigerant analysis reports contamination that is already in the machine. It is useful evidence of past ingress, not a forecast of which tube goes next.
Option D: An ultrasonic test of the shell, which measures the thickness of the vessel wall around the bundle
Shell thickness measurement addresses the pressure vessel rather than the tubes, and the tubes are what fail on these machines.
Memory Technique
Eddy current reads the tube like an x-ray reads a bone. Pressure tests only tell you it has not broken yet.
Reference Hint
Eddy current testing measures tube wall condition along each tube and identifies tubes likely to fail before they do.
More epa-608-type-3 Questions
Some jobs on a chiller count as a major repair under the refrigerant rules, which changes what a technician is allowed to do with a badly leaking machine. Which job falls into that category?
An owner asks how many pounds of refrigerant the rules allow to be left inside a chiller once the recovery has been signed off. What is the correct answer to give him?
The motor of a hermetic centrifugal chiller sits inside the pressure boundary rather than outside it on a shaft. What follows from that construction?
An oxygen monitor is used to decide whether a chiller machine room is safe to enter after a refrigerant release. Below what oxygen reading is the atmosphere treated as oxygen deficient?
A low-pressure chiller's rupture disc has a discharge line running from it. Where does that line have to terminate?
A refrigerant vapor detector in a chiller machine room reaches its alarm level. Besides sounding, what is that alarm expected to do?
Which piece of equipment requires a technician to hold Type III certification before it may be serviced?
What property of the refrigerant is what actually places an appliance into the low-pressure category?
During normal operation, what condition exists inside the evaporator of a running low-pressure centrifugal chiller?
In what unit is the required final recovery vacuum for a low-pressure appliance normally expressed?
People Also Study
Business & Financial Management
120 questions · 70% to pass
Contract Administration
60 questions · 70% to pass
Project Management
60 questions · 70% to pass