Refrigeration vs air conditioning systems
Refrigeration vs Air Conditioning Systems
A major difference between refrigeration and air conditioning is the point of supply for the gases. The gas used in refrigeration was ammonia, air conditioning systems also uses ammonia, built-in chemicals and also air from the room or rooms being heated. Gases built into air conditioning units cool air that circulates through the unit then redistributes the cooled air through the room. The supply point of the refrigerator is the point before the evaporation phase. Refrigeration systems circulate cool liquids and gases in tubes and vents. Cool air from refrigerator is sucked into a compressor that recycles the gas through the tubes. Air conditioners have circulation systems designed to project cool air away from the units while refrigeration units have circulation systems designed to maintain the cooling in a confined space. Air conditioners, also use tubes and fans for the cooling system. But unlike refrigeration systems, air conditioning systems disperse cool air throughout areas of unknown volumes.
Both the air conditioning and refrigeration units depend on converting liquid to gas in the cooling process, but the way in which they achieve this conversion process is different. Air conditioners uses an evaporator to convert a liquid to a gas. The evaporator changes the pressure of a liquid so that it evaporates. Whereas the refrigeration units, cycle the refrigerant into a low-pressure chamber which is designed to boil the gas. This boiling causes the refrigerant to vaporize. Thus air conditioning units vaporize liquid through evaporation while refrigeration systems do so through boiling.
For an air conditioning system air movement is required in the space, to keep the occupants cool, the air is needed to be circulated continuously. In refrigerator, air movement is controlled by the temperature which is needed to be maintained. Once the required temperature is reached, the air movement stops.
The other difference upon which the difference are actually made are the size associated with the refrigeration process. A refrigerator is a closed box which is required to cool the items and the capacity of refrigeration is small and its purpose is only meant to cool the things. On the other end, an air conditioner is designed to cool the large space, by maintaining all the parameters which are Temperature, air velocity, humidity, purity of air.