subject: How Does Central Air Conditioning Work? [print this page] I am certain that you know that air con comes in several forms, and what we are taking a look at here is yet another methodology, but just how does central aircon work?
All air con systems have a tendency to work on similar principals and central air conditioners are custom-built to chill the whole home and gets use from channels to scatter and recycle cooled air through rooms on a constant basis. Some models could also move chilled water thru pipes and heat exchangers.
Most often you'll find a split system where the condenser and compressor are located out of doors and connected by refrigerant lines to a coil ( or evaporator ) in the in the air handler unit. Such a unit fundamentally looks like a metal box which will comprise of a blower, filters, heating / cooling elements, mixing chamber, humidifier, controls and vibration isolators. By contrast, with a 'packaged' system, everything is usually found in a single out of doors unit.
Heat from the house is moved to the outside employing a compressor cycle that works in a similar fashion to a chiller. A refrigerant liquid is passed thru a growth device which changes from liquid to gas when it soaks up heat and is then released out of doors at high pressure as vapor before changing back from gas to liquid. The liquid will then return to the growth device and the method repeated.
The air in the house is cooled as it travels over the evaporator ; the moisture removed from the air and dumped by the unit thru the household drainage system.
Central air-con has 1 or 2 benefits over other systems as the air is drawn thru a filter from parts of the building. This filter extracts any dust and lint particles cleaning the air as well as cooling it. In addition, specialist filters can also remove minute contaminants which can affect health. Another benefit is that noise is reduced as the unit is external to the building.
Central air conditioning is an efficient system but you do need to try and get the highest SEER rating you can afford (the range is 10 to 17). (SEER refers to the Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio.) If the unit carries the Energy Star label, it will have a SEER of at least 13 for a split system and 12 for a single unit. A unit with a lower SEER will be uneconomical so if you are considering buying anything second-hand, do watch out for this as the newer units are mostly over 12.
