A Trip Through the Pipes

A Trip through the Pipes

Ouch! Something hard touched the end of my feet. In the darkness, I couldn’t make out the color or the shape clearly, but it was no doubt made of steel. I tried to remember what I had put in my back porch, but I could not remember. So I went back into the house, turned the light of the porch on, and returned. It was a huge box-shaped machine with metal fans and fins on it. Thick layer of dust seemed to show how long this machine had been here, but I could not recognize the machine. Wondering what it was, I shouted out all the way to the living room, “Mom, what is this machine in the back porch?” The answer I got, as loud as my voice, was “Air conditioner.”

Everybody who owns an air conditioner (AC) will see a similar machine in their back yards or porches. People know that the machine is part of an AC. However, they do not actually know what they are used for. That machine, which people do not care much about, is actually the main core of AC where it does its work.

The air conditioner’s function is very simple. AC’s only job is to vaporize and liquidize to cool people inside the house. Vaporization occurs when a liquid form of an element turns into a gas, and liquidation is when a gas form of an element turns into a liquid. Both of these actions require a change in the heat. When atoms are in a liquid state, they are very inactive and do not contain much heat inside them. To become a gas state, they need heat, which they earn from their environment. It is just the opposite for liquidation. Gas needs to lose energy and heat to turn into liquid.

Now, since liquidation and vaporization is defined, we have to take a look at how they actually function to make AC work. To understand the process of how air-conditioner cools the air inside a house, you just have to follow the refrigerant - a unique chemical that can easily convert from gas to liquid, and liquid to gas - on its trip. The trip is divided into three main stations: compressor, condenser, and evaporator.

The first stop is called compressor, which is located in the outside part of air conditioner. Refrigerant enters compressor as a low-temperature, low-pressure gas. The compressor squeezes this gas and makes molecules closer. As molecules get together, they interact with each other more frequently, and therefore gain higher energy and temperature. As soon as they get hot enough, they move onto the next stop, condenser.

The next stop for hot-temperature, hot-pressure gas from compressor is condenser, which is also in the outer part of the AC. Condenser is a part with metal fins