How Air Conditioners Work

• An air conditioner has a compressor inside, which is connected to cooling

tubes.
• The compressor compresses gas called Freon (refrigerant) which is stored
inside the system.
• Due to compression gas becomes hot and developes high pressure .
• This hot gas runs through condenser coil so that it can dissipates the heat
and eventually the gas turns into liquid.
• This liquid gas runs through an expansion valve and in the process it
evaporates to become cooled low pressure gas.
• This cold gas runs through evaporator coil that allows the gas to absorb heat
and cool down the air surrounding the coil of the tubes.
• A fan blows the air over the set of cool tubes. Thus the cold air gets blown
into the room and reduces the temperature of the room.
Refrigeration :
Refrigeration is the removal of heat from a space at a temperature lower
than the surrounding temperature.
• For example if we remove a bucket of water from a tank, the surrounding
water rushes in, to fill the cavity.
• Similarly heat rushes in, to replace the heat removed.
• Insulation reduces the in-rush of heat.
• Whatever heat enters through the insulation into the refrigerated space
has to be removed with help of refrigerating machine.
• The refrigerating machine gets rid of the energy received by it, by
rejecting it to the surroundings in the form of heat.

• Refrigeration thus amounts to pumping of heat from lower to higher

temperature.

• Heat has a natural tendency to flow from higher to lower temperature.

Refrigeration also defined as “the science of providing and maintaining

temperatures below that of surrounding atmosphere”.
Refrigeration Cycle:
warm liquid refrigerant as it goes through expansion valve it expands into a low
pressure liquid.
This liquid travels down the copper tube and goes to evaporator coil.
The liquid when travels through evaporator coil evaporates totally and
becomes gas at the time it reaches its end.
This gas reaches compressor.Compressor compresses gas into high pressure gas
and this high pressure gas picks up the heat as it goes through the condenser
coil.
As this high temperature high pressure gas travels through condenser the gas
condenses into liquid and by the time it reaches its end of coil it should be
totally liquid.
Then it travels through copper tube back to the expansion valve and starts the
cycle all over again.
Difference Between Air conditioning and Refrigeration
1.Refrigeration removes the heat from the enclosed space where as AC cools the air and the
circulates in the enclosed space

2.Refrigeration does not cater to latent heat load i.e it does not have any control over humidity
whereas AC caters both latent as well as sensible load so it has temperature as well as humidity
control

3.Refrigeration has no control over air quality whereas AC has filters to improve air quality

4.Refrigeration does not involve circulation of air as it only works on heat absorption for phase
change of refrigerant in vapour cycle where as AC cools the air in air handling unit (AHU) and
then circulates it through the space .

5.Refrigerants used in AC are Fluro Carbons and these have a higher Global warming and Ozone
depletion potential i.e these are harmful to humans in case of leakage

6.Refrigeration does not cater to Human comfort i.e it is mostly used for storage and you wont
find comfort in refrigerated space because of extremely low temp. On other hand AC keeps a
control of both humidity and temperature