HVAC 102: How Does an Air Conditioner Work?

So how does a Air Conditioner actually work?

The Air Intake or as we like to call the return, the air conditioner pulls warm air from inside your home through a grille or vent.

Inside the air conditioner, there's a special coolant, called refrigerant. This refrigerant is a substance that can easily change from a liquid to a gas and back again at low temperatures. It's what makes the cooling process possible.The warm air passes over coils filled with the refrigerant. The refrigerant absorbs the heat from the air, causing it to turn from a liquid into a gas. This gas is then compressed by a compressor, which squeezes it tightly together.

Once the refrigerant is compressed, it becomes very hot. This hot, pressurized gas then moves to another set of coils outside your home, where it releases its heat into the outside air. As it cools down, it changes back into a liquid form. The liquid refrigerant passes through an expansion valve, which rapidly expands it, causing it to cool down even further.

The cool liquid refrigerant now moves back inside your home to the coils where the warm air is being drawn in. As the warm air passes over these cold coils, the refrigerant absorbs the heat from the air, causing it to evaporate back into a gas.

The now cooler air is blown back into your home through vents, while the refrigerant continues its cycle, repeating the process over and over again to keep your home nice and cool.

So, in simple terms, your air conditioner takes warm air, cools it down by removing the heat, and then blows the cooler air back into your home. It's like having a magical fridge for the air in your house!