Air conditioners and refrigerators work the same way. The difference is that, instead of cooling just the small, insulated space inside of a refrigerator, an air conditioner cools a room, a whole house, or an entire business.

Most certainly, air conditioners do use chemicals that are easily convert from a gas to a liquid and back again. This chemical is used to transfer heat from the air inside of a home to the outside air.

An airconditioner has three main parts – a compressor, a condenser and an evaporator. The compressor and condenser are usually located on the outside air portion of the air conditioner. The evaporator is located on the inside the house.

The refrigerant gases arrive at the compressor as a cool, low-pressure gas. The compressor increases the gas pressure causing the molecules of the gas to collide until they are at a high temperature and under significant pressure. The compressor squeezes the gas into a high temperature fluid that passes to the condenser unit. This hot and pressurized gas then enters the condenser. Heat is dissipated from the air conditioner’s external unit by way of the exhaust fan and metal radiator fins. As the gas is processed through the condenser, the temperature is greatly cooled and because of the high pressure and the low temperatures, the gas turns to a liquid.

After the condenser, the liquid is funneled into the evaporator through a very tiny, narrow hole (called a venturi) and the liquid expands rapidly into a gas, removing the heat from the chamber, cooling it significantly and blasting it into the target room or area.