The air conditioning system in your Twin Cities metro area home uses the principles of refrigeration for transferring heat out of your home and providing cool air to your home, but there’s more to it than that. Learn how your air conditioner keeps your home cool, and you can keep more money in your pocketbook.
Hot is out, cool is in
When air is hot, the heat wants to move to cooler air when it’s available. Your air conditioning system is designed to use this natural occurrence to cool your home by transferring heat from the air inside your home to the air outside. But, the air outside your home is likely warmer than the air inside, which is the reason you need the air conditioner on in the first place.
Heat in your indoor air is transferred to outside air by the manipulation of refrigerant (temperature, state and pressure) inside your air conditioning system, much like a see-saw effect. This is how it works:
- High-pressure liquid refrigerant flows into the indoor evaporator coil under low pressure.
- A blower pulls household air across the evaporator.
- Heat in the warm air naturally transfers to the cold refrigerant coil.
- The household air becomes cool and is blown into your home via the duct system.
- The refrigerant boils to a gas state as it absorbs heat.
- The refrigerant gas is pumped from the evaporator to the compressor.
- The compressor squeezes the refrigerant to prepare it to release heat.
- The hot refrigerant flows from the compressor into the condenser.
- Another blower pulls air across the condensing coil and fins, which instigates the hot refrigerant gas to change to liquid, and transfer the heat it contains to the cooler outside air.
- Even though the outside air may be very hot, the refrigerant is substantially hotter, which allows the heat from the refrigerant to transfer to the outside air.
- The refrigerant leaves the condenser as a cooler liquid.
- The refrigerant flows to an expansion valve to prepare to repeat the heat transfer again.
Please contact us at Marsh Heating & Air Conditioning if you would like to learn more about the ins and outs of your air conditioning system from one of our certified air conditioning technicians.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about air conditioning systems and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.
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