Air Conditioners Move Heat
All scenes › Chapter 4 Outdoor unit: dump the heat
More heat out than in
Heat dumped = heat taken in + electricity
View in 3DHeat in + electricity = heat out
The outdoor unit dumps about 3.1 kW of heat outdoors. That is the 2.5 kW of heat taken from the room, plus the 0.6 kW of electricity that went into the compressor. Heat does not disappear or appear from nowhere: what goes in comes out.
Why?The electricity used by the compressor does the work of squeezing the refrigerant, and that work ends up as heat in the refrigerant. So the heat leaving the outdoor unit equals the heat taken from the room plus the electricity.
Learn moreSo an air conditioner cools the room but makes the outdoors a little warmer. The rule that energy never disappears and never appears from nowhere is called the law of conservation of energy (the first law of thermodynamics).
- Heat the outdoor unit dumps
- 3.1 kW
calculated from R-32 property tables (CoolProp) · example: room 27 °C, outdoors 35 °C
View this scene in 3D →Read more
Wikipedia: First law of thermodynamics
More in the series
Temperatures, pressures and amounts of heat are calculated from property tables for the refrigerant R-32 (CoolProp). The example is a home air conditioner removing 2.5 kW of heat, with the room at 27 °C and the outdoors at 35 °C. In the 3D view, the refrigerant moves far slower than in real life, and the inside of the compressor and the expansion valve are shown as enlarged, simplified models.