Air Conditioners Move Heat
All scenes › Chapter 1 The heat in the room
A summer room
Seeing the heat in a room as red dots
View in 3DA room full of heat
It is a midsummer afternoon, and the room is at 27 °C. The red dots on screen show the heat in the room. Heat is not made of little grains; it is an amount of warmth, but we draw it as dots so you can see it. Let’s switch on the air conditioner and follow where these dots go.
Why?The air, the walls, the furniture and your body all hold heat. For the same object, the higher its temperature, the more heat it holds. To make a room cool, you have to take some of that heat away.
Learn moreThis story uses a typical wall-mounted home air conditioner as its example: the room is at 27 °C, it is 35 °C outdoors, and the unit removes 2.5 kJ of heat from the room every second (2.5 kW). Every temperature and pressure on screen is calculated for these conditions from refrigerant property tables.
- Room temperature (example)
- 27 °C
calculated from R-32 property tables (CoolProp) · example: room 27 °C, outdoors 35 °C
View this scene in 3D →Read more
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.