Recently Air Conditioning is being an essential part of quality life. New AC technologies, reduced price, and energy consumptions in such systems have made air conditioning systems more common to use in workspaces and domestic sites along with special purpose work. In this article, we are not going to discuss trends and technologies in Air Conditioning, rather we are giving some very common understanding about the general workflow of air conditioning systems.
Many people think that Air Conditioner system creates cold/hot Air. But Air conditioner don’t create the cold or hot air. Instead, they work by removing the heat inside your house and transferring it outdoors or by taking the heat from outside and transferring the heat to inside.
Nowadays Air Conditioning systems provide both cooling and heating effects as per your choice. So to know the details about how exactly does this process work?, Firstly let us know how an air conditioner moves heat outside to generate cooling effect inside.
How an air conditioner moves heat outside
The heat inside your home is absorbed and transferred outside via a cooling agent, or “refrigerant”. The refrigerant is contained inside coils that travel through a closed system. The coils guide the refrigerant from inside your home to the outdoors and back inside again.
Stations along the route manipulate the state, pressure and temperature of the refrigerant so that it absorbs or rejects heat at specific points. These stations include:
- Evaporator
- Compressor
- Condenser
Let’s take a closer look at this process:
Photo Courtesy of Energy Vanguard/Allison Bailes
Step 1: Heat is absorbed by the evaporator coil
The warm air inside your house is drawn in through a vent and blows over the cold evaporator coil. The evaporator coil is the station located indoors and absorbs heat from the air, cooling the air. A fan blows the cold air into air ducts that distribute it throughout your home.
As the refrigerant absorbs the heat from the passing air, it changes from a liquid state to a gaseous state and continues to travel along the loop system toward the compressor.
Step 2: Compressor raises the refrigerant temperature
The compressor decreases the gas’ volume. Usually this is done by squeezing the gas tightly between two solid objects.
This raises the pressure and temperature of the refrigerant, preparing it for the condensing process.
Step 3: Heat is transferred outside
The refrigerant, now a superheated vapor, reaches the condenser (which is located outdoors) and is exposed to the outside air. The outside air absorbs the heat from the refrigerant, lowering the temperature of the refrigerant and changing the state from a gas back into a liquid.
Step 4: Refrigerant gets cold; process repeats
Once the heat from the refrigerant is removed from the outdoors, the cold refrigerant travels back indoors to the evaporator to repeat the process over again. The process continues until the inside temperature of your home reaches your desired level. At this point, your thermostat tells your AC to shut off.
Reverse process is operated to generate the heating effect inside.
