Automobile air conditioning

Automobile air conditioning (also called A/C) systems use air

conditioning to cool the air in a vehicle.

Contents
History
Chrysler Airtemp
Nash integrated system
Growth in demand
Evaporative cooling 1953 Chrysler Imperial with factory trunk
Operating principles mounted "Airtemp" system

Power consumption
See also
References
External links

History
A company in New York City in the United States first offered installation of air conditioning for cars in 1933.
Most of their customers operated limousines and luxury cars.[1]

In 1939, Packard became the first automobile manufacturer to offer an air conditioning unit in its cars.[2] These
were manufactured by Bishop and Babcock Co, of Cleveland, Ohio. The "Bishop and Babcock Weather
Conditioner" also incorporated a heater. Cars ordered with the new "Weather Conditioner" were shipped from
Packard's East Grand Boulevard facility to the B&B factory where the conversion was performed. Once complete,
the car was shipped to a local dealer where the customer would take delivery.

Packard fully warranted and supported this conversion, and marketed it well. However, it was not commercially
successful for a number of reasons:

The main evaporator and blower system took up half of the trunk space (though this became less of a problem as
trunks became larger in the post-war period).
It was superseded by more efficient systems in the post-war years.
It had no temperature thermostat or shut-off mechanism other than switching the blower off. (Cold air would still
sometimes enter the car with any movement as the drive belt was continuously connected to the compressor—later
systems would use electrically operated clutches to remedy this problem.)
The several feet of plumbing going back and forth between the engine compartment and trunk proved unreliable in
service.
The price, at US $274 ($4,692.12 in 2014 US dollars), was unaffordable to most people in post-depression/pre-war
America.
The option was discontinued after 1941.[3]
Chrysler Airtemp
The 1953 Chrysler Imperial was one of the first production cars in twelve years to offer modern automobile air
conditioning as an option, following tentative experiments by Packard in 1940 and Cadillac in 1941.[4] Walter
Chrysler had seen to the invention of Airtemp air conditioning in the 1930s for the Chrysler Building, and had
offered it on cars in 1941-42, and again in 1951-52.

The Airtemp was more advanced than rival automobile air conditioners by 1953. It was operated by a single
switch on the dashboard marked with low, medium, and high positions. As the highest capacity unit available at
that time, the system was capable of quickly cooling the passenger compartment and also reducing humidity,
dust, pollen, and tobacco smoke. The system drew in more outside air than contemporary systems; thus, reducing
the staleness associated with automotive air conditioning at the time. Instead of plastic tubes mounted on the
rear window package shelf as on GM cars, small ducts directed cool air toward the ceiling of the car where it
filtered down around the passengers instead of blowing directly on them, a feature that modern cars have lost.[4]

Cadillac, Buick, and Oldsmobile added air conditioning as an option on some of their models in the 1953 model
year.[5] All of these Frigidaire systems used separate engine and trunk mounted components.[6][7]

Nash integrated system

In 1954, the Nash Ambassador was the first American automobile to have a
front-end, fully integrated heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning system.[8][9]
The Nash-Kelvinator corporation used its experience in refrigeration to
introduce the automobile industry's first compact and affordable, single-unit
heating and air conditioning system optional for its Nash models.[10] This was the
first mass market system with controls on the dash and an electric clutch.[11] This
system was also compact and serviceable with all of its components installed
under the hood or in the cowl area.[12]

Combining heating, cooling, and ventilating, the new air conditioning system for
the Nash cars was called the "All-Weather Eye".[13] This followed the marketing
name of "Weather Eye" for Nash's fresh-air automotive heating and ventilating
Logo on a 1957 car with
system that was first used in 1938.[12] With a single thermostatic control, the
AMC factory installed air-
Nash passenger compartment air cooling option was "a good and remarkably conditioning system
inexpensive" system.[14] The system had cold air for passengers enter through
dash-mounted vents.[15] Nash's exclusive "remarkable advance" was not only the
"sophisticated" unified system, but also its $345 price that beat all other systems.[16]

Most competing systems used a separate heating system and an engine-mounted compressor, driven by the
engine crankshaft via a belt, with an evaporator in the car's trunk to deliver cold air through the rear parcel shelf
and overhead vents. General Motors made a front-mounted air conditioning system optional in 1954 on Pontiacs
with a straight-eight engine that added separate controls and air distribution. The alternative layout pioneered
by Nash "became established practice and continues to form the basis of the modern and more sophisticated
automatic climate control systems."[17]

Growth in demand
Air-conditioning for automobiles came into wide use from the late twentieth century. Although air conditioners
use significant power; the drag of a car with closed windows is less than if the windows are open to cool the
occupants. There has been much debate on the effect of air conditioning on the fuel efficiency of a vehicle.
Factors such as wind resistance, aerodynamics and engine power and weight must be considered, to find the true
difference between using the air conditioning system and not using it, when estimating the actual fuel mileage.
Other factors can affect the engine, and an overall engine heat increase can affect the cooling system of the
vehicle.

The innovation was adopted quickly and new features to air conditioning like the Cadillac Comfort Control which
was a completely automatic heating and cooling system set by dial thermostat was introduced as an industry first
in the 1964 model year.[18] By 1960 about 20% of all cars in the U.S. had air-conditioning, with the percentage
increasing to 80% in the warm areas of the Southwest.[19] American Motors made air conditioning standard
equipment on all AMC Ambassadors starting with the 1968 model year, a first in the mass market, with a base
price starting at $2,671.[20][21] By 1969, 54% of domestic automobiles were equipped with air conditioning, with
the feature needed not only for passenger comfort, but also to increase the car's resale value.[22]

Evaporative cooling
A car cooler is an automobile evaporative cooler, sometimes referred to
as a swamp cooler.[23][24] Most are aftermarket relatively inexpensive
accessories consisting of an external window-mounted metal cylinder
without moving parts, but internal under dashboard or center floor units
with an electric fan are available.[25][26] It was an early type of
automobile air conditioner[27] and is not used in modern cars relying on
refrigerative systems to cool the interior.

To cool the air it used latent heat (in other words, cooling by water
A car cooler
evaporation).[28] Water inside the device evaporates and in the process
transfers heat from the surrounding air. The cool moisture-laden air is
then directed to the inside of the car.[28][29] The evaporate "cooling" effect decreases with humidity because the
air is already saturated with water. Therefore, the lower the humidity, such as in dry desert regions, the better
the system works. Car coolers were popular, especially among summer tourists visiting or crossing the
southwestern United States states of California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, and Nevada.[26]

Operating principles
In the refrigeration cycle, heat is transported from the passenger compartment to the environment. A
refrigerator is an example of such a system, as it transports the heat out of the interior and into the ambient
environment.

Circulating refrigerant gas vapor (which also carries the compressor lubricant oil across the system along with it)
from the evaporator enters the gas compressor in the engine bay, usually an axial piston pump compressor, and
is compressed to a higher pressure, resulting in a higher temperature as well. The hot, compressed refrigerant
vapor is now at a temperature and pressure at which it can be condensed and is routed through a condenser,
usually in front of the car's radiator. Here the refrigerant is cooled by air flowing across the condenser coils
(originating from the vehicle's movement or from a fan, often the same fan of the cooling radiator if the
condenser is mounted on it, automatically turned on when the vehicle is
stationary or moving at low speeds) and condensed into a liquid. Thus,
the circulating refrigerant rejects heat from the system and the heat is
carried away by the air.

The condensed and pressurized liquid refrigerant is next routed through

the receiver-drier, that is, a one way desiccant and filter cartridge that
both dehydrates the refrigerant and compressor lubricant oil mixture in A simple stylized diagram of the
order to remove any residual water content (which would become ice refrigeration cycle: 1) condensing
inside the expansion valve and therefore clog it) that the vacuum done coil, 2) expansion valve,
3) evaporator coil, 4) compressor
prior to the charging process didn't manage to remove from the system,
and filters it in order to remove any solid particles carried by the
mixture, and then through a thermal expansion valve where it
undergoes an abrupt reduction in pressure. That pressure reduction
results in flash evaporation of a part of the liquid refrigerant, lowering
its temperature. The cold refrigerant is then routed through the
evaporator coil in the passenger compartment.

The air, often after being filtered by a cabin air filter, is blown by an
adjustable speed electric powered centrifugal fan across the evaporator,
causing the liquid part of the cold refrigerant mixture to evaporate as
well, further lowering the temperature. The warm air is therefore cooled, Regassing the air conditioning of a
and also deprived of any humidity (which condenses on the evaporator Ford Focus.

coils and is drained outside of the vehicle) in the process. It is then

passed through a heater matrix, inside of which the engine's coolant
circulates, where it can be reheated to a certain degree or even a certain temperature selected by the user and
then delivered inside the vehicle's cabin through a set of adjustable vents. Another way of adjusting the desired
air temperature, this time by working on the system's cooling capacity, is precisely regulating the centrifugal fan
speed so that only the strictly required volumetric flow rate of air is cooled by the evaporator. The user is also
given the option to close the vehicle's external air flaps, in order to achieve even faster and stronger cooling by
recirculating the already cooled air inside the cabin to the evaporator.

To complete the refrigeration cycle, the refrigerant vapor is routed back into the compressor.

The warmer is the air that reaches the evaporator, the higher is the pressure of the vapor mixture discharged
from it and therefore the higher is the load placed on the compressor and therefore on the engine to keep the
refrigerant flowing through the system.

The compressor can be driven by the car's engine (e.g. via a belt, often the serpentine belt, and an
electromagnetically actuated clutch; an electronically actuated variable displacement compressor can also be
always directly driven by a belt without the need of any clutch and magnet at all) or by an electric motor.

Power consumption
In a modern automobile, the A/C system will use around 4 horsepower (3  kW) of the engine's power, thus
increasing fuel consumption of the vehicle.[30]

See also
 Sustainable automotive air conditioning

References
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17. Nunney, Malcolm J. (2006). Light and Heavy Vehicle Technology. Elsevier Science & Technology Books. p. 147.
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4_Cadillac_VVI.pdf) (PDF). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20151210214651/https://www.gmheritagecenter.c
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23. Hinckley, p. 54 "...it was actually an evaporative cooler - something Californians and Southwesterners have on the
roofs of their houses and often call 'swamp coolers' or 'swampies"."
24. Heitmann, John Alfred (2009). The Automobile and American Life (https://books.google.com/books?id=FOUyBwAAQB
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26. Watt, John R. (1986). Evaporative Air Conditioning Handbook (https://books.google.com/books?id=KkwyBwAAQBAJ&
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27. Hinckley, p. 54
28. Sibley, p. 221
29. "The Easy Way" (https://books.google.com/books?id=hdkDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA676&dq=%22car+coolers%22&lr=&as_
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Mechanics. 75 (5): 676–677. May 1941. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20150322170319/http://books.googl
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External links
"Air Conditioners for Your Car" (https://books.google.com/books?id=EyoDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA117&dq=Special+Repor
t+Air+Conditioners+for+Your+Car+Want+a+cooler+car+this+summer?+1969). Popular Science. 194 (4): 117–132,
includes detailed drawings. April 1969. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Automobile_air_conditioning&oldid=850539854"

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