What is the basic mechanism behind Air conditioner.

Question

How does an air conditioner cool down a room?

In: 3

Answer 1

Imagine how you’d use a sponge to move water out of your house.

First, you squeeze the sponge outside to get any water out.
Then, you bring it inside and let go, so that it soaks up some water.
Move the sponge back outside and squeeze the water out.
Repeat.

This is basically what an air conditioner does, with a substance called a refrigerant instead of a sponge and heat instead of water.

Just like a sponge, a refrigerant can expand to hold heat and be squeezed to release that heat again. It actually goes from a liquid to a gas when it absorbs the heat. You can then compress it back into a liquid to squish that heat back out.

So an air conditioner takes the refrigerant outside of your house and (literally) squeezes it, pressing the heat out. This turns it into a liquid.

Then it pipes this liquid back into your house and lets off the pressure, allowing it to soak up some heat from your home and expand back into a gas.

This gas is taken back outside and compressed back into a liquid to squeeze that heat out. Rinse and repeat!