| Welcome to airconditionmission3.com where
you can find all things related to the world of Air
Conditioners. Air conditioning. What a lifesaver. It
has made the suburbs possible. Manufacturing from the
north to the south occurred because plants could be
built and people could work in them without collapsing
from the heat. Its cost at one point, however, drew
one scientist, William Schockley the co-inventor of
the transistor, to move his research facilities to California,
to what later became known as Silicon Valley. There
he did not have to put air conditioning in his building.
Even when air-conditioning was purposely avoided, it
had an impact.
So it started out as a way of making people comfortable.
Right? Well, not exactly. In 1882, thanks to Thomas
Edison, the first electric power plant opened in New
York making it possible for the first time to have
an inexpensive source of energy for residential and
commercial buildings. And by 1889, central station
refrigeration was used in large cities to preserve
foods and documents. It was well known that a cool
surrounding could preserve foods and other perishables
for a long time. But what was not well known was how
humidity and heat were related. Then in 1902, Willis
Carrier built the first air conditioner to combat
humidity inside a printing company. Controlling the
humidity in printing companies and textile mills was
the start of environment management. |
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A Cars HVAC System
02/07/12
Not only do we depend on our cars to get us where we want to go, we also depend
on them to get us there without discomfort. We expect the heater to keep us
warm when it's cold outside, and the air conditioning system to keep us cool
when it's hot.
We get heat from the heater core, sort of a secondary radiator, which is part
of the car's cooling system. We get air conditioning from the car's elaborate
air conditioning system.
Despite its relatively small size, the cooling system has to deal with an enormous
amount of heat to protect the engine from friction and the heat of combustion.
The cooling system has to remove about 6,000 BTU of heat per minute. This is
a lot more heat than we need to heat a large home in cold weather. It's good
to know that some of this heat can be put to the useful purpose of keeping us
warm.
Air conditioning makes driving much more comfortable in hot weather. Your car's
air conditioner cleans and dehumidifies (removes excess moisture), the outside
air entering your car. It also has the task of keeping the air at the temperature
you select. These are all big jobs. How do our cars keep our "riding environment"
the way we like it?
Most people think the air conditioning system's job is to add "cold"
air to the interior of the car. Actually, there is no such thing as "cold,"
just an absence of heat, or less heat than our bodies are comfortable with.
The job of the air conditioning system is really to “remove” the
heat that makes us uncomfortable, and returns the air to the car's interior
in a "un-heated" condition. Air conditioning, or cooling, is really
a process of removing heat from an object (like air).
A compressor circulates a liquid refrigerant called Refrigerant-12 (we tend
to call it "Freon," a trade name, the way we call copy machines "Xerox"
machines). The compressor moves the Refrigerant-12 from an evaporator, through
a condenser and expansion valve, right back to the evaporator. The evaporator
is right in front of a fan that pulls the hot, humid air out of the car's interior.
The refrigerant makes the hot air's moisture condense into drops of water, removing
the heat from the air. Once the water is removed, the "cool" air is
sent back into the car's interior. Aaaaaah! Much better. Newer cars have R-134
as the refrigerant, but work in the same way as R-12.
Sometimes we worry when we catch our car making a water puddle on the ground,
but are relieved to discover that it's only water dripping from the air conditioning
system's condenser (no color, no smell, and it dries!).
Note: Refrigerant is extremely dangerous. Many special precautions must be taken
when it is present. It can freeze whatever it contacts (including your eyes),
it is heavier than air and can suffocate you, and it produces a poisonous gas
when it comes in contact with an open flame.
The above information is directly from the Auto Insight program, which you can
buy online from AutoEducation.com.
Common Problems:
·From time to time the A/C system needs to be recharged to bring it
back up to maximum efficiency. Sometimes a leak may cause loss of refrigerant
and will need to be fixed before refilling. It's difficult to tell if a leak
is present without specific test equipment so let it up to a professional.
·Corrosion will cause the heater core (secondary radiator) to leak. This
will manifest itself by leaving steam into the passenger compartment and fogging
your windows. You will know there is a leak by the sweet smell coming from your
vents. Unfortunately changing the heater core is usually not the easier job
in the world, as engineers tend to squeeze them into some pretty tight spaces
under the dash.
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