It’s a common misconception that air conditioning cools homes down by creating cool air; AC companies will tell you, that they actually work by taking the unwanted heat from inside your house and transferring it to the outside.
Inside every air conditioner is a substance called the refrigerant, it can change from a liquid to gas and back again, it is this process that is responsible for transferring the heat from your home to the outside.
There are 3 main parts to the air conditioner: the evaporator, which evaporates the refrigerant, the compressor which compresses the refrigerant and finally the condenser, which guess what? Condenses the refrigerant!
The 5 steps below will simply explain what is happening inside your air conditioner.
Warm air inside the house passes into the ac unit and moves over the evaporator coil, which contains cool refrigerant.
This heat causes the refrigerant to warm up inside the evaporator and it turns (evaporates) into a gas. The now cool air originally from the house is blown back out of the air conditioner by fans inside the ac unit.
The refrigerant gas now travels from the evaporator to the compressor.
At the compressor the refrigerant is compressed, this causes the temperature and the pressure of the refrigerant to rise.
The super heated, pressurized refrigerant gas now travels to the part of the air conditioning unit that is outside the house.
Outside the house, in the condenser, the heat from the refrigerant passes out into the outside air. The refrigerant cools and turns back into a cool liquid. The refrigerant moves back into the unit within the house, to the evaporator and the whole process starts again.
