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An air conditioner makes your home
cooler, true. But in terms of how the system actually works, it's more accurate
to say that an air conditioner makes your home less warm. What it's really doing
is drawing heat energy out of the house and transferring that heat to the
outdoors (where it's already so blasted hot that nobody notices the difference).
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A cool gas (the refrigerant) flows into
the compressor, where it is compressed into high temperature, high
pressure gas. The compressor pumps this hot gas through the tubes to .
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The condenser coil in the outdoor unit (also called the condenser.) As the
hot gas passes through the condenser coil tubes, heat is transferred from the
gas, through the metal fins surrounding the air. This causes the gas to cool and
condense into liquid. A motorized fan forces air across the condenser metal fins
to increase the rate at which heat is transferred. Meanwhile...
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The liquid refrigerant flows through tubes to the evaporator inside your
home. Once inside the evaporator, the refrigerant goes through a pressure
reducing device that causes the refrigerant to quickly expand and to cool
rapidly. Then the cold refrigerant travels through the tubes of the evaporator
coil where it absorbs heat energy from the surrounding air and turns back into a
gas (it evaporates). Also, humidity from warm moist indoor air condenses on the
evaporator and drains away. Meanwhile... |
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A blower draws warm air from the house, moves it through the evaporator where
heat energy is removed and blows this air on through the ductwork into your home
-- cooler, dryer and altogether more pleasant. From there... |
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The cooler gaseous refrigerant travels through tubes back to the compressor
where the cycle begins again. |
So you see, that air blowing out the top of your outdoor unit is so hot because
it contains heat energy that was inside your house just a couple of minutes
before. |