Most of us have come into contact with the cooling effect of an air conditioner. It may be in a shopping mall or an office or maybe inside your car. However, have you ever stopped to think how an air conditioner actually works?
We thought we would take the time to provide you with an expert’s insight into how this useful piece of machinery goes about making your days during the scorching summer months, more bearable.
Lets get started..
Similar to the refrigerator you have in your kitchen, an air conditioner achieves its cooling effect by filling the hot or warm air in its surroundings by colder air. The difference here is that instead of having to cool a smaller, more confided space of a refrigerator, an air conditioner has to cool a much larger area, whether that’s the inside of your car, your bedroom or your workplace.
It’s all gas, chemicals and air
Using chemicals that can easily transform from a gas form to a liquid form and then back to a gas form, an air conditioner uses these chemicals and bouts of air to displace the heat from within the room to outside of the room.
At the heart are 3 parts - a compressor, a condenser and an evaporator.
The evaporator is what you have probably seen if you have an air conditioner in your room. The compressor and condenser are usually located on the outside of the unit. For non split-types, this is directly behind the unit and outside of your room.
The mechanism
The compressor squeezes the fluid which arrives as a cool, low-pressure gas form which results in packing the molecule of the fluids more tight and the higher and more closely packed the molecules, the higher its energy and the temperature. The fluid takes the hot air with it and leaves as a high, hot-pressure gas via the compressor and then outward of the condenser, which is usually outside of the room. This is why the rear of an air conditioner can get quite hot due to the large volume of hot air it is displacing and which is why metal fin-shaped structures are built at the back of the air conditioner, allowing the hot air to dissipate more quickly.
When the working fluid leaves the condenser, its temperature is much cooler and it has changed from a gas to a liquid under high pressure. The liquid goes into the evaporator through a very tiny, narrow hole. As the liquid pressure drops, it begins to change form, from liquid to gas and as it changes to gas, it extracts heat from the air molecules around it, resulting in cooler air left behind.
The evaporator works similar to a vacuum cleaner. The fan connected to the evaporator circulates the air and as the hot air which is heavier rises, the evaporator sucks this and disperses it outside of your room. The void is filled with the cooler area being generated by the air conditioner. This is the reason why the back of the unit of a traditional unit is emitting warm air – it’s the same air being sucked out of the room and onto the environment.
This is a continuous process until the room reaches the desired temperature – most modern air conditioners have a built in thermostat and temperature gauge and you can set the exact temperature you wish to have in your room.
The Heat Pump
Want to know how to turn an ‘air conditioner’ to an ‘air warmer’?
If you flipped the mechanism of a standard air conditioner so that the hotter coil were on the inside, what you would be left with is a air warmer or a heater. Instead of burning fuel, it is moving heat resulting in a more efficient way of generating heat.
A heat pump is an air conditioner that contains a valve that lets it switch between "air conditioner" and "heater." When the valve is switched one way, the heat pump acts like an air conditioner, and when it is switched the other way it reverses the flow of the liquid inside the heat pump and acts like a heater.
Author Resource:
Air Conditioning Manchester
offers the widest range of air conditioners and coolers across the UK. From delivery to installation to after care, we offer a fully-managed approach that takes the hassle out of
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