How Does Air Conditioning Work?
How often do you drive past a Charlotte home or other building
and notice the air conditioner? Probably never, unless it is a
window air conditioner that looks like it doesn’t belong there. True
air conditioning means not only controlling the temperature, but
reducing the humidity and purifying the air. Air-cooling is simply
forcing cool or cold air into a room, space or building. For the
purpose of this article, the terms will be interchangeable. The
simplest way to describe it works is the same way your refrigerator
keeps food cold.
That would be a fair enough explanation, if you know how a
refrigerator keeps things cool. You do know that almost everyone has
a refrigerator. You know they make a very quiet noise every few
minutes. You know things stay cold and fresh longer. The
refrigerator isn’t that complex. It circulates a refrigerant through
a system of coils. The noise you hear is a compressor. The
compressor compresses the gas refrigerant into a liquid. The liquid
then moves through the coils and absorbs heat. We will go into
greater detail shortly.
Many Charlotte homes have air conditioner units in the back or
side yard. Some have the window air conditioner, which is effective
for cooling a smaller area. Office buildings and other larger
buildings have the units on the roof or in large metal structures
containing a system.
No matter what the size or the shape, most all air conditioners
function the same way. As we said, it works essentially the same as
your refrigerator. The principal is evaporation. Both the
refrigerator and the air conditioner unit use a refrigerant that, in
its normal state, is a gas. The gas may be one of several types or
composition, but it is commonly referred to as Freon. The process of
cooling the inside of a refrigerator, or for an air conditioner to
cool a building space, is a cycle.
The first piece of the air conditioning system is the compressor.
The compressor does just that, it compresses the refrigerant gas.
The process makes the refrigerant become hot and, of course, under
pressure. The now hot gas circulates through coils on the outside of
the refrigerator or building and dissipates the heat. The heat
dissipating cools the refrigerant gas back into a liquid. After the
refrigerant becomes a liquid it goes through another piece of the
system called an expansion valve. Running through the expansion
valve produces evaporation and the refrigerant becomes cold and at
low pressure. The cold gas continues through the interior of the
refrigerator or building via coils. The cold, low-pressure
refrigerant attracts and absorbs heat inside a refrigerator. In an
air conditioner, a fan propels the cold air throughout the area or
building. The cycle starts then all over again.
There is little doubt that most people look at air conditioning
and air cooling as a welcome miracle. It is a simple process of
converting a refrigerant gas to a hot liquid under pressure, then
changing it to a low pressure-cooling agent to absorb heat; keeping
us and our food cool.
If you are looking
for a Cabarrus County air conditioning contractor please call
us today at 704-933-5262 or complete our
online request
form.
|
