How Air Conditioning Works in an Automotive or Car

With summer comes heat. Heat can make your car unbearable to drive, which is why air conditioning was introduced by Packard in 1939. Beginning in luxury cars and now expanded into almost every vehicle produced, car air conditioning has been cooling drivers and passengers for decades.

What does car air conditioning do?

Car air conditioning has two main purposes:

Cools the air entering the passenger compartment
Removes the moisture from the air so it feels more comfortable inside the vehicle.

In many makes, air conditioning cycles automatically when the defrost setting is chosen. It pulls the humidity from the windshield to improve your visibility. Often cold air is not required when the defrost setting is selected, which is why it is important to know that air conditioning functions even when the heat is selected on the heater control.

How does air conditioning work?

Auto air conditioning systems operate in much the same manner from manufacturer to manufacturer. All makes have some common components:

Compressor
Condenser
Expansion valve or orifice tube
Receiver, drier, or accumulator
Evaporator

The car air conditioning system is pressurised by a gas known as refrigerant. Each vehicle specifies how much refrigerant is used to fill the system, and is usually three or four pounds at most in passenger vehicles.

The compressor does just that: it compresses the refrigerant from a gaseous state into a fluid and the fluid is cycled through a refrigerant line. Because it is under high pressure, this is called the high side.

The next procedure occurs in the condenser. The refrigerant flows through a grid similar to a radiator. Air passes through the condenser and removes the heat from the refrigerant.

The refrigerant then moves on next to the expansion valve, or orifice tube. A valve or restriction in the tube reduces the pressure in the line and the refrigerant returns to a gaseous state.

Next, the refrigerant enters the receiver drier, or accumulator. Here, a desiccant in the receiver drier removes moisture that is carried in with the refrigerant in gas form.

After the receiver drier, the cooler, drier refrigerant passes into the evaporator, still in its gaseous form. The evaporator is the only part of the air conditioning system that is actually in the passenger compartment. Air is blown through the evaporator core, and the heat is removed from the air and transferred into the refrigerant, leaving cooler air exiting past the evaporator.

The refrigerant cycles through to the compressor again. The process continues repeatedly.

If you have any problems with your car air conditioning system, ask one of the friendly team at SuperCool, we would be happy to help.