The temperatures are climbing to record numbers around the U.S. and many homes are running some kind of air conditioner to battle the seasonal heat. Although we are all grateful that your air conditioner works, the professionals at Solar Air Inc. in Fort Lauderdale thought they would give you a glance at how an air conditioner operates.
The Basics
There’s a lot of science behind keeping your house at a comfortable temperature. Your air conditioner runs in a similar way to your refrigerator, of course your air conditioner has a larger responsibility to manage. Both your fridge and AC cool with a reoccurring loop of refrigerant, in your air conditioner this refrigerant loops from inside to outside your home. This refrigerant easily converts from a liquid to gas and back to a liquid again. It flows into your residence as a sub-cooled liquid and as it evaporates it absorbs heat from inside the home and reverts back into vapor. This vapor then transfers back to your outdoor unit where the heat is freed and is then condensed back into a sub-cooled liquid.
Four Components
There are 4 main sections to your AC system: a compressor, an evaporator coil, the condensing coil and an expansion valve.
The evaporator coil is the location your refrigerant evaporates from a sub-cooled liquid into a super-heated vapor. This component can be found inside your home, in your garage or even in your attic. Warm air moves through the cold evaporator coil and the heat is taken from the air. This cooled air is then transferred throughout the space inside your home.
Your compressor is located in your outdoor condensing unit. The super-heated vapor from your evaporator coil flows into the compressor which surges the pressure of the vapor until it is changed into hot, high pressure vapor. The hot vapor then goes back into the condenser coil where less hot outdoor air flows across the coil, heat is released outdoors and the refrigerant is converted back into a sub-cooled liquid. The sub-cooled liquid then goes back to the indoor evaporator coil through an expansion valve or metering device. This continues repeatedly throughout the process.
That concludes your physics lesson of the day…your air conditioner runs on an never-ending loop of science. We know that it’s not as top-priority to you how it works, but that it’s working. If you’d like to talk about staying cool and comfortable in Fort Lauderdale contact us at 954-320-7398. Thanks to science and our pros, you’ll get through this hot summer.