How does Air Conditioning work?

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Air Heaters are easy to understand, it’s basically just running electricity through a wire, so that excess energy turns into heat. Heating is easy enough that you can do it in the form of a campfire with primitive tools.

Air Cooling is a lot harder. I can’t think of a single way to just up and cool air without the use of something that’s already cold.

So how does Air Conditioning work?

(If it’s just some specific obscure chemical reaction then I’ll be disappointed)

In: Technology

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Air conditioners *do* use chemicals to cool the air, but it’s a change of state and not a chemical reaction that make this occur. Freon is a rather popular chemical used in ACs, and this is first introduced into the system as a gas. The chemical of choice is condensed into a liquid form, creating pressure and the desire to be gaseous again. This chemical is then reintroduced into a low pressure chamber, where it wants to expand. This expansion requires energy, which comes from the heated air that is brought into the system from outside, or possibly inside based on the setup. The expansion of this chemical sucks the energy from the air to expand and revert to a gas form, and the rest of the system takes the cool air and circulates it through.

This isn’t a perfect explanation, and more information can be found [here](https://howardair.com/how-does-air-conditioning-work/)

Edit –
It’s also worth noting that the chemicals that are chosen for this, stay cold in this system, but would rather not outside of it. Its like freezing water with pressure, the gasses are kept cold because of the environment they are in. After heating the freon, or other chemicals, the gasses pass through radiators to transfer that energy outside of the system, to be cycled through again.

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