Maintaining a certain temperature and humidity in the car, in other words, creating a comfortable microclimate, has several goals. The main one is not even the achievement of comfort as such. Experiments are also carried out on people, and back in the 50s it was found that at a temperature of more than + 30 ° C, a person’s reaction significantly decreases, after + 25 ° C, the fatigue threshold doubles, and at + 10 ° C hypothermia of the body is possible. A person is helpless in front of a thermometer and few people can resist the influence of temperature. The car air conditioner is just trying to provide the driver with the most comfortable conditions for performing the necessary reflex functions. Comfort is like a free supplement to these necessary conditions.
The energy consumption of an air conditioner depends on many factors, one of them is incorrect operation.
The principle of operation of the cabin air conditioner
Trite, but the comparison with the refrigerator suggests itself. Only with some differences. The cooling system of the refrigerator operates under conditions close to ideal. The refrigerator compartment is completely closed and looks more like a thermos, and it works from an electric motor, and not from an internal combustion engine. The difficulty in the operation of an air conditioner lies in the fact that there is no way to completely isolate the interior from the environment, therefore, several times more energy will be required to cool the interior, and the volume of the refrigerator will be smaller. This is where the cost of the torque of the car engine to drive the device comes from. But first things first.
Schematically, the operation of an air conditioner boils down to the following: the compressor creates pressure in the line, while compressing the refrigerant and moving it along the line. Under pressure, the gaseous refrigerant liquefies, condenses in the heat exchanger and heats up. In the reverse process of changing from liquid to gas, the refrigerant in the heat exchanger absorbs heat. The refrigerant takes out excess heat outside the cabin and transfers it to the atmosphere with the help of a condenser located in the engine compartment, most often in front of the engine cooling radiator. That is why it is so important to keep the condenser clean. The efficiency of the entire system depends on how efficiently it cools the refrigerant.
Video tutorial on how a car air conditioner works:
Car air conditioner device
The most complex and most expensive unit in the system is the compressor. Its task is to compress the cold refrigerant and transfer it to a warm liquid state. The only weak point, from the point of view of tightness, the place of the entire line is the rotating shaft of the compressor. A drive pulley is attached to the shaft. The compressor drive is equipped with an electromagnetic clutch, through which the rotation of the shaft is ensured.
Compressor structure diagram.
The refrigerant fills the entire line and at normal atmospheric pressure is a gas. Initially, the air conditioning system was filled with R12 freon. Only after all its unsafe properties for humans and for the atmosphere appeared, it was necessary to look for a replacement, and it was found.
It was R134a freon gas, which has a slightly lower efficiency, but does not have such a detrimental effect on health.
The new gas became more fluid, which somewhat complicated the life of engineers and the design of the air conditioner. In addition, the use of a new type of freon completely eliminated the use of R12, since a completely different oil was used to lubricate the compressor in its composition. Freons of the new and old generation are incompatible.
Car air conditioner service:
And you can’t mix them just because of the compressor oil, which has to circulate along with the refrigerant throughout the line. Old freon was mixed with mineral oil, and R134a freon already contains polyalkylene glycol oil. Therefore, when refueling the system, the brand of refrigerant must be taken into account.
To get rid of problems, manufacturers put a sticker under the hood, it indicates the brand of refrigerant, and in order to completely eliminate mixing, they use labels of different colors - green for R134a, R12 is marked with a yellow sticker.
Photograph of a car air conditioner condenser.
An air conditioner radiator, a condenser, a condenser - this is the name of a device in which freon changes its physical state, passes from gaseous to liquid. This is another headache for owners of air-conditioned vehicles, since the condenser is installed in front of the radiator of the cooling system and is exposed to all winds, dust, fragments and small stones. It, like the evaporator, is made of aluminum and can be brought to a state of inoperability in two to three years. The evaporator is not so loaded with extraneous influences, because it is located in the cabin near the heater radiator. The evaporator is responsible for the reverse process - the transition of the refrigerant into a gaseous state and the transfer of energy to the direct cooling of the air supplied to the ventilation and heating ducts.
The air conditioner is often blamed for unjustified consumption of engine power, but with a properly serviced and timely charged system, without malfunctions and refrigerant leaks, power loss is almost imperceptible, and fuel consumption can increase with active use of the system by only 4-5%.
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