“Can I use 50L bladder on 15G accmulator?”
During our daily customer service and support, we noticed that many customers do not differentiate 50L and 15G bladders in use, assuming they are interchangeable. This is wrong and dangerous. See the following case we were reported by the customer recently.
After the normal installation and testing, some bladders broke with marks. We checked with the customers for the procedures and pressures and it seemed to be all right. Other possible mistakes were also checked and eliminated one by one. Then we took all the bladders out of the accumulators and finally found out that some of them showed tappred spherical shape at the bottom, a sign of over-stretch.
Then we learned that the customer used 50L bladders on the standard 15G size accumulators. This is not an unusual use by many customers. There’s no recorded report on this misuse so far.
We didn’t find other reason of this kind of failure and believe using the shorter bladder is the major reason. Here’s the dimensions of the standard 15G shell and two kinds of bladders:
| 15G Shell | 50L Bladder | 15G Bladder |
|---|---|---|
|
1828mm |
1620mm |
1730mm |
As we can see from above dimensions, the 50L bladder is about 110mm shorter than the 15G bladder. The bladder is over-streched during the installation. Below picture shows the postions during installation:
Because of this confusion, we always remind our customers to use the right size of bladders. There are some metric size bladders on the market converted to American size accumulators, but make sure to check and understand the sizes and dimensions of them.
Using improper sized bladders can cause the bladder failure, even the bladder or accumulator manufacturers may not tell you this clearly. If you need such help, please let us know.
Check our other articles regarding the bladder failure reasons and preventions.
