An air conditioner is a system or machine which treats the air of an enclosed area ( for example your room, house, or business premises ) thru refrigeration cycle. To maintain the low temperature in the enclosed area. Warm air is removed or replaced by the cool air.
An air conditioner unit has four major components.
- Compressor
- Condenser
- Evaporator
- Drier & Expansion Valve
Functions of theses four major components.
Compressor performs two main functions, it creates the flow of refrigerant in the complete cycle. It also produce pressure difference.
Condenser also performs two major functions, first of all it is responsible for heat dissipation of refrigerant. It is also responsible for the conversion of vapour refrigerant into the liquid refrigerant.
Evaporator – This component absorbs the heat and also convert liquid refrigerant into vapour.
Drier And Expansion Valve – This component filter the liquid refrigerant. It absorbs the moisture from the liquid refrigerant. This component is also used to drop down the pressure of liquid refrigerant.
These above four components plays a important role in the functioning of an air conditioner unit. Similar to Air Conditioner is Heat Pumps.
How An Air Conditioner Work
The chemical which we uses in the air conditioners is known as the “refrigerant”. Refrigerant has a property to easily convert from gas to liquid and liquid to gas again. This refrigerant is used to transfer the heat from the air inside of a room to the outside air.
The entire process starts, when the compressor puts pressure on the refrigerant, then refrigerant enter into condenser in the form of high pressure and high temperature vapour refrigerant.
Condenser exerts heat from it into the atmosphere and turns refrigerant vapour into high pressure and low temperature liquid. Then high pressure and low temperature liquid refrigerant enter into the drier and expansion valve, after passing thru it, it turns into low pressure and low temperature liquid when it enters into evaporator.
When this low pressure and low temperature liquid passes thru the evaporator, it absorbs the heat from surrounding and thus it creates the cooling effect and refrigerant turns into low pressure low temperature vapour and enter into the compressor.
This way one cycle completes, which repeats again and again to attain the desired temperature.
The evaporator also has metal fins to help in exchange the thermal energy with the surrounding air. A fan is connected to the evaporator which circulates air inside the room.
Refrigerator, Air Conditioners, Water Dispenser, Deep Freezer all works on same principle.