How Does Your Home Air Conditioning System Work?

Many of us are baffled by the workings of a home air conditioning system. Furnaces are simple devices that heat air and distribute it throughout your home via ductwork. Boilers produce hot water or steam, which is then piped throughout your home. But, during the dog days of summer, how do air-conditioning systems produce pleasant cool, dehumidified air? To comprehend it, you must return to a physics theory you may have learned in high school or college: the scientific law that any gas cools as its volume expands.


The Components

  • Refrigerant

  • Compressor

  • Condenser

  • Expansion valve

  • Evaporator coil


Refrigerant

The refrigerant is the "blood" that circulates through the air conditioner's cooling tubes. As it accumulates heat from your home and ejects it to the outdoors, it changes state from gas vapour to liquid. The boiling point of a refrigerant is extremely low, making it a one-of-a-kind substance. This means that at low temperatures, it transforms from a liquid to a vapour. This is crucial for an air-conditioning system to function securely without producing harmful levels of heat. The refrigerant, on the other hand, does not travel through the system on its own; it is pumped by a compressor.


Compressor

Consider the compressor to be the system's "heart," the component that circulates refrigerant through all of the refrigeration components in a large copper loop. The refrigerant enters the compressor as a warm, low-pressure vapour and exits as a hot, high-pressure vapour. The condenser will make this change possible.


Condenser

The condenser receives heated refrigerant vapour from the compressor. As it passes through condensing coils, the high-pressure hot refrigerant vapour is cooled. The coils contain thin metal fins that transmit heat from the coils (similar to the construction on the front of an automobile radiator). To expedite the cooling of the vapour inside the coils, a condenser fan pumps air over the fins. (During routine maintenance, a fin comb can assist keep these fins in shape.) As the refrigerant cools, it transforms from a heated vapour to a hot liquid under high pressure, which it then passes via the expansion valve. The compressor, condenser coil, and condenser fan are all housed in the large noisy box in your garden known as a condensing unit.

Expansion Valve

The expansion valve is the component that actually cools the system. On one side, the hot liquid refrigerant goes through a tiny aperture in the valve under high pressure, while on the other side, it emerges as a cool low-pressure mist. This is due to a natural feature of gases: they cool as they expand. The air conditioner is actually just a device that forces the refrigerant gas to expand, which is what gives it the power to chill the air by releasing its heat.


For more information on Air Conditioner Repair in Etobicoke please contact @ (+1) 437-777-4555.

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