Hello! Would appreciate any basic explanation on how airconditioners work. Mine just got busted (and I’m from a very hot, tropical country!). I’m tempted to just call the maintenance guy, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to first learn about it before spending some dough. I’ll be using A/C units all my life anyway.
Been watching some YT videos but once terms like “latent heat vaporization” are mentioned, my mind just shuts off. Many thanks to all the articulate and patient folks out there!
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Good answers here, let me relate what I remember from physics class.
Think about basic water. It can be solid, liquid, or gas. The difference is the TEMPERATURE. It needs additional energy to move to a more “excited” state, and removing energy makes the molecules “less excited”. Add heat to liquid water and it will change states into steam. Remove heat from liquid water and it changes to ice.
So we know we can control the liquid/gas state by adding or removing energy. An AC unit uses this concept and reverses it. It’s a closed system where pressure can be controlled. It uses pressure – that’s the compressor unit – to force the gas coolant back into a liquid state. That action forces it to release energy. The heat goes out through the heat sinks, and a fan blows it out from underneath your fridge.
Now you have cold, liquid coolant. That gets pumped through pipes to cool the air around it. The coolant steals heat from inside your fridge. The coolant is pumped slowly enough that it has room in the pipes to expand back into gas. It absorbs energy to make that transition. Once it’s turned back into gas, it completes the loop and goes back into the compressor.
As for repairs on an AC unit – I’m no expert, but a few things can go wrong. The motor could be bad. The capacitor used for starting the motor could be bad. There could be a leak and a lack of coolant, in which case the unit may run but the air won’t be cold. What happens when you try to start the AC?
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