There are many types of air conditioning
systems that can be used in the home, including window units, portable air
conditioners, ductless air conditioners and central air conditioning systems.
Despite their differences, however, the physics of how they work is the same,
and they all use the following components and direct expansion refrigeration.
In principle, it works very much the same way as your food refrigerator. The
three basic parts of an air conditioner are the evaporator, the compressor, and
the condenser. The evaporator can be found on the part of the air conditioner
inside the house, while the compressor and condenser are located in the outside
unit.
Regardless of the type of installation,
all air conditioning unitsconsist of four major components that are:
Evaporator
An evaporator is basically a heat exchanger
coil that’s responsible for collecting heat from inside a room through a
refrigerant gas. This component is known as the evaporator, and is where the
liquid refrigerant absorbs heat and evaporates
to become gas.
Compressor
As the name clearly signifies, this is
where compression of the gaseous refrigerant occurs. It’s located in the
outside unit, such as the part that’s installed outside the house.
Condenser
The condenser receives the vaporized
refrigerant from the compressor, converts it back to liquid and expels the heat
outside. Needless to say, it’s also located on the outside unit of the split
Las Vegas air conditioning.
Expansion valve
Also referred to as the throttling device,
the expansion valve is located between the two sets of coils which the chilled
coils of the evaporator and the hot coils of the condenser. It keeps tabs on
the amount of refrigerant moving towards the evaporator. Note that in the case
of window air conditioning units, the three aforementioned components are all
located inside a small metal box that is installed in a window opening.
Air conditioning units are found in any
place that requires cooling and this includes homes, cars, hotels and even
ships. To simplify things we’re going to limit the scope of this discussion to central air conditioning systems, most of which
are split or central systems which those air conditioning
systems commonly found in homes and offices in which some of the parts that
make up the air conditioning system are found inside of the home or office building and
other parts are located outside of the home or office building.
Modern life wouldn't be as comfortable as
it is without air conditioning technology. It’s important to know and
understand that air conditioning systems are closed pressurized systems.
Flowing through the system is a coolant that facilitates heat transfer. This
“fluid” is called the refrigerant. The refrigerant is a chemical compound with
the physical and chemical characteristics necessary to facilitate the proper
operation of the system. This means that it needs to have the correct boiling
point, freezing point, etc. to allow for the system to work correctly. If the
chemical doesn’t meet the exact criteria required by the system then it cannot
be used.
Your Las Vegas air conditioning system needs to be maintained just like any other aspect of your home's HVAC
system.
