Heat And Cool Air Conditioners

Heat and cool air conditioners work via a standard model of cooling thermodynamics. The principles behind thermodynamic cooling are basically the same as those applied in refrigeration. What happens is that a heat source–either electrical or gas-based–heats up a compressor full of cool Freon gas, thereby exciting the Freon gas molecules.

This heated compressed gas then gets passed outside the air conditioner into the hot part of the unit. Now that the compressed Freon gas is much cooler than the surrounding area, the molecules of Freon slow down, and the gas changes phase and becomes a liquid. The liquid, now cooler than the surrounding environment, gets passed back into the cool section of the air conditioner. The Freon molecules then leach heat from the surrounding environment, allowing the air conditioner to cool the room.

The Basics of Heat and Cool Air Conditioners
Why do heat and cool air conditioners utilize Freon gas? For one, Freon is non-toxic and relatively cheap to manufacture. Secondly, Freon gas is an inert gas–as a result, it does not bond easily with other molecules and, thus, it’s extremely difficult to create accidentally corrosive or explosive chemical reactions using Freon.

Believe it or not, heat and cool air conditioners use up more energy than standard ovens, lights, and other hot appliances in your house. To keep your electricity bill down, therefore, try to run your air conditioner only during the day. Use your air conditioner sensibly, and you won’t have any surprises when you get the electricity bill.

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