How AC Works?
How Air Conditioner work?
In this post, you will get Complete info about How AC works? So let’s start – Air conditioners provide much-needed thermal comfort throughout the hot summer months. Air conditioners, in particular, assist in maintaining a comfortable room temperature. They also aid in the removal of airborne pollutants and moisture from space. Let’s have a look at how these gadgets work.
Let’s begin by taking a very basic approach to learning how an air conditioner works. Two connected coils with continually circulating refrigerant fluid are found within an air conditioner. The evaporator is the coil inside the room, while the condenser is the coil outside the room.
CONDENSER
An air conditioner’s basic idea is straightforward. Simply maintain the evaporator cold, preferably colder than the ambient temperature, and the condenser hot, preferably hotter than the ambient temperature. Under these circumstances, the continually moving fluid will take heat from the room and discharge it into the environment. This is the most basic rule of air conditioning. Let’s have a look at how this guideline is applied in practice.
Two further components, a compressor and an expansion valve, are required within your air conditioner to achieve this goal. The compressor, as you might expect, raises the refrigerant’s pressure. A working example of a reciprocating type compressor may be seen here. The compressor compresses the refrigerant in its gaseous state, causing the temperature to rise in tandem with the pressure.
At the compressor exhaust, the temperature will be much greater than the ambient temperature. As a result, you may quickly eject the heat by passing this hot gas through the condenser heat exchanger. This task is made easier by the presence of a fan in the condenser unit.
COMPRESSOR
The gas condenses to a liquid during this heat ejection phase. At the condenser’s outflow, an expansion valve is installed. The objective of the expansion valve is to reduce the pressure of the fluid by restricting the refrigerant flow. The main trick is about to begin. You may be aware that simply lowering the pressure around a liquid can cause it to boil. This phenomenon also occurs inside the expansion valve.
One part of the refrigerant liquid evaporates when the pressure lowers. However, some energy must be provided in order for this evaporation to occur. As a result of this energy coming from within the refrigerant, the temperature of the refrigerant drops. Inside an air conditioner, the cold refrigerant is created in this manner. The temperature of this low-temperature refrigerant should be lower than that of the room.
As a result, moving the room’s air over the evaporator coil lowers the room temperature. During the heat absorption process, the refrigerant is transformed to vapor. You may have heard the term tonne used in relation to air conditioners.
TON
The ton represents
How much heat the evaporator can absorb from the room?
In simple terms, it refers to the ability of an air conditioner to remove heat. We have so accomplished the main rule of an air conditioner. The temperature in the coil inside the room is lower than the room temperature, but the temperature outside the room is higher than the atmospheric temperature.
The compressor is located near the condenser, while the expansion valve is located near the evaporator in a real air conditioner. This design has a few flaws in terms of functionality. The air temperature near the evaporator coils will be fairly low. Water condensation will form on the evaporator coils as a result of this. That’s why we’ll need a conduit to drain the condensate water. Instead of reciprocating compressors, modern air conditioners employ scroll compressors. From this image, you can see how the compression process works. They are quiet and have excellent speed control.
Do you know how your air conditioner is able to maintain an almost steady room temperature irrespective of the load?
For greater temperature control, modern air conditioners use inverter technology, which uses a variable speed motor. The motor speed, compressor speed, refrigerant flow rate, and cooling capacity may all be precisely regulated by modifying the motor speed. The air conditioner is about to face an unusual design problem.
An air conditioner’s compressor is designed to handle only vapour, and even a little amount of liquid content can degrade its effectiveness and cause damage to the compressor. For these reasons, it’s ideal if the evaporator converts all of the liquid to vapour and then raises the temperature of the vapour by five to eight degrees Celsius.
How does it make sure that the fluid which enters the compressor is purely vapored?
This condition is maintained by a thermostatic expansion valve, which is a unique type of expansion valve. TXV is the abbreviation. The TXV is similar to the expansion valve we saw earlier, except this time the needle is controlled by the temperature of a bulb. The evaporator exit is connected to the bulb.
A diaphragm separates the refrigerant inside the bulb from the main refrigeration cycle. The refrigerant inside the bulb will evaporate as it heats up, and the needle will go down. We know that the limitation helps to produce rapid cooling of the refrigerant over the expansion valve. The outlet refrigerant will be cooler the tighter the restriction is.
Let’s consider a bad situation for the compressor
Assume the evaporator temperature is not extremely low, thus the evaporator absorbs very little heat and does not convert all of the liquid in it to vapour. As a result, the refrigerant on its way to the compressor will not be overheated. The ball will sense the low temperature at the evaporator exit quickly, causing the needle to travel upwards and narrow the limitation. The tight restriction generates a significant temperature reduction, allowing the evaporator to receive much colder fluid and absorb more heat.
This ensures that the entire liquid is turned to vapour. As a result, the TXV takes care of the difficult duty of maintaining a vapor-only condition at the compressor inlet. Let’s clear up a common misunderstanding at this point.
TXVs do not control the room temperature
They simply ensure that the refrigerant is delivered to the compressor in vapor form. The compressor’s speed controls the refrigerant flow rate and the room temperature. TXVs are widely utilized in industrial and home applications because of their simplicity and efficiency.