How Does An Air Conditioner Work?

byAlma Abell

If you arrange for air conditioning installation in Lebanon Ohio the whole process may be a bit of a mystery. Air conditioners are very different than furnaces, a furnace is simple; they heat air and then blow it through ducts to each room in the house. If your heating system is hot water then a boiler simply heats the water which moves through the house via a piping network. This is easy to understand but how does an air conditioner cool air and dry it at the same time?

An air conditioner, regardless of whether it is a central unit or a window or split unit takes the hot air that is in your house and dumps it outside, to do this there are five basic components:

* The refrigerant

* A compressor

* A condenser

* The expansion valve and

* The evaporator coil

The refrigerant changes state as it does its part. It changes from gas vapor to a liquid as it takes the heat from inside the house and deposits it outside. The refrigerant is a special material that has a low boiling point which simply means it can change from a liquid state to a gas vapor at low temperatures.

The compressor can be thought of the heart, it pumps the refrigerant through all the various components in a never ending loop; the refrigerant goes into the compressor as vapor at low pressure and leaves as a hot vapor at high pressure.

During the air conditioning installation in Lebanon Ohio the crew will install a great noisy box outside your house, this is the condenser. The hot vapor moves from the compressor where it is cooled with a stream of air that flows over the condensing coils which are finned. As the refrigerant travels through the finned coils it changes again, this time from a hot vapor to a hot liquid where it gores to the expansion valve.

The expansion valve is where the work happens. The hot liquid is sent through a small orifice at high pressure and when it comes out it is cool mist at low pressure. This cool mist then moves to the evaporator coil to the evaporator which inside the furnace plenum. The hot air in the house travels across the surface of the evaporator, cools and is sent through the house.

AAA Heating & Cooling certified technicians provide air conditioning installation in Lebanon Ohio.