I have a portable one that has a hose thing that goes to a window but I don’t understand why it’s necessary. Is it?
In: Technology
An air conditioner is basically a heat exchanger. It doesn’t ‘make’ cold (heat is energy and cold is just the absence of that energy), so what an air conditioner does is take heat energy from one place and put it somewhere else.
The way air conditioners work is by condensing and evaporating a refrigerant (basically a liquid with a low boiling point)
So, the refrigerant is pumped as a liquid into the ‘cold side’ of the A/C unit where it’s under low pressure which allows the refrigerant to boil off and evaporate. The refrigerant needs energy in order to boil and it gets this by absorbing heat from the environment. This refrigerant is then pumped to to ‘hot side’ of the A/C unit where it is compressed and the high pressure causes the refrigerant to turn back from a gas to a liquid and release the heat it absorbed on the cold side. Then, the now liquid refrigerant is pumped back to the cold side and the whole process starts again.
Basically, liquid boils, absorbing heat from the environment, and then is compressed back to a liquid dumping that heat back into the environment. We’re just moving heat energy from one place to another.
So, basically, if you just put an A/C unit in the middle of the room, it’s going to blow cold air out the front and hot air out the back. It’s removing the heat from the air and just releasing it again.
But, if you put the A/C unit in a window, it’ll take the heat from the air in your room and then release it outside. With your unit, that’s what that hose is for.
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