How Does Air Conditioning Work? Editor's Note: In this weekly series, Live. Science looks at scientific aspects of the summer season. The technology has had a profoundly comforting impact on modern life, and about 8. American homes these days have some form of air conditioning, according to the Energy Information Administration. The basic concept is that a chemical called a refrigerant loops from inside the home to outside and back again, absorbing and casting out heat in the process. LiveScience looks at how air conditioners work to keep you cool, including the history and chemistry of your home's A. Removing heat is not all that an air conditioner does as it, ahem, conditions the air. The simplest air conditioner units work in almost exactly this way. Most modern air conditioners avoid CFCs. Warm air is pulled in from a room (1). The refrigerant cools and then re- enters the home, starting the cycle anew, explained Glenn Hourahan, senior vice president at the Air Conditioning Contractors of America. The same goes for the refrigerant: it absorbs heat in its liquid state, transforming into a gas. The refrigerant is then forced to return to being a liquid, expelling the heat it absorbed and thus made ready to soak up heat once again. Fans in the home blow air across the evaporator's coils. It went from being a cold liquid to a hotter vapor, and at the same time, the air had heat removed from it, so the air went from being warmer to colder. As the name implies, the compressor compresses the gas to a state of higher pressure and higher temperature. Here, the gas is condensed back into its liquid state as heat is radiated away. Outdoor units often have metal fins on them to help dissipate the heat more quickly. The expansion device regulates the flow of liquid refrigerant into the evaporator, where just as before it will absorb heat and change phase from a liquid into a low- pressure gas. Moisture trap. Removing heat is not all that an air conditioner does as it, ahem, conditions the air. Humidity — the amount of water vapor in the air — is a major factor in how our bodies feel the heat; a more humid environment prevents sweat from evaporating off the skin, which helps to whisk away unwanted bodily warmth. In 1. 90. 2, engineer Willis Carrier drew up a method to remove irksome humidity from the air at a printing company in Brooklyn, N. Y. Original article on Live.
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