Why do we use energy to remove energy from rooms?

Question

I’m talking about air conditioning. Why can’t we just use the ambient energy to move the excess energy out of the room somehow?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

We can, that’s called opening a window or natural ventilation. The problem is that its not particularly quick in most scenarios, and often times ambient energy levels are as high or higher than the interior ones.

In order to increase the rate of energy transfer we need to add energy in the form of work done by the compressor in an air conditioner (or just the motor of a fan). Many people want to increase that rate so that the steady state condition (where it ends up sitting) of the energy in – energy out equation is at an average energy (temperature) they feel comfortable at.