Cooling Systems

Air conditioners come in all shapes and sizes, so we will narrow them down for you under the most common types.

The first type of system is probably the simplest to explain because the types of systems that cool fall into very few categories. The following links will explain mechanical cooling systems, or air conditioners. The final link explains evaporative cooling systems, otherwise known as "swamp coolers".

How an Air Conditioner Works

the easiest way to explain how an air conditioner works is to use evaporation as an example.

Hold your hand about six inches from your mouth and blow on it. Does it feel warm or cool? It feel cool. Why? Because even though the air in your body is is warmer than the air around you, the evaporation of the moisture on the palm of your hand cools the air.

When a liquid evaporates it absorbs heat. The "liquid" that an air conditioner uses is called "refrigerant", which most people refer to as "Freon". Refrigerant is moved as a gas through the air conditioning system using a compressor. The refrigerant passes through another coil, referred to as the "condenser coil" which cools it down and removed the heat - turning the refrigerant back into liquid. If you have an outside condensing unit, then you know that the air blowing out of it during the summer is hot.

To sum it all up - your indoor unit moves air across the indoor evaporative coil, and the heat is absorbed into the refrigerant in the coil. the refrigerant is then circulated outside, where the heat is exhausted with a fan blowing across the outside condenser coil. An air conditioner doesn't "add" cool air, it removes heat from the air.