Patent attributes
An outdoor expansion valve is provided for a liquid side pipe of an outdoor circuit. The outdoor circuit is provided with a liquid side bypass pipe that allows the liquid side pipe to communicate with a suction side of a compressor. Receiving a signal indicating that a refrigerant has leaked from an indoor circuit, an outdoor controller executes a refrigerant recovery control operation of operating the compressor with a liquid side control valve closed, and executes a valve control operation of opening a liquid side bypass valve of the liquid side bypass pipe in the refrigerant recovery control operation. As a result, the refrigerant can be recovered from an utilization-side circuit to a heat-source-side circuit while avoiding damage to the compressor, and the amount of refrigerant leaking from the utilization-side circuit can be reduced.
