Air conditioning

The term air conditioning most commonly refers to the cooling and dehumidification of indoor air for thermal comfort. In a broader sense, the term can refer to any form of cooling, heating, ventilation or disinfection that modifies the condition of air.An air conditioner (AC or A/C in North American English, aircon in British and Australian English) is an appliance, system, or mechanism designed to stabilise the air temperature and humidity within an area (used for cooling as well as heating depending on the air properties at a given time) , typically using a refrigeration cycle but sometimes using evaporation, most commonly for comfort cooling in buildings and transportation vehicles.
The concept of air conditioning is known to have been applied in Ancient Rome, where aqueduct water was circulated through the walls of certain houses to cool them. Similar techniques in medieval Persia involved the use of cisterns and wind towers to cool buildings during the hot season. Modern air conditioning emerged from advances in chemistry during the 19th Century, and the first large-scale electrical air conditioning was invented and used in 1902 by Willis Haviland Carrier.Comfort applications aim to provide a building indoor environment that remains relatively constant in a range preferred by humans despite changes in external weather conditions or in internal heat loads.
The highest performance for tasks performed by people seated in an office is expected to occur at 72 °F (22 °C) Performance is expected to degrade about 1% for every 2 °F change in room temperature.The highest performance for tasks performed while standing is expected to occur at slightly lower temperatures. The highest performance for tasks performed by larger people is expected to occur at slightly lower temperatures. The highest performance for tasks performed by smaller people is expected to occur at slightly higher temperatures. Although generally accepted, some dispute that thermal comfort enhances worker productivity, as is described in the Hawthorne effect.
Comfort air conditioning makes deep plan buildings feasible. Without air conditioning, buildings must be built narrower or with light wells so that inner spaces receive sufficient outdoor air via natural ventilation. Air conditioning also allows buildings to be taller since wind speed increases significantly with altitude making natural ventilation impractical for very tall buildings. Comfort applications for various building types are quite different and may be categorized as
Low-Rise Residential buildings, including single family houses, duplexes, and small apartment buildings
High-Rise Residential buildings, such as tall dormitories and apartment blocks
Commercial buildings, which are built for commerce, including offices, malls, shopping centers, restaurants, etc.
Institutional buildings, which includes hospitals, governmental, academic, and so on.
Industrial spaces where thermal comfort of workers is desired.
In addition to buildings, air conditioning can be used for comfort in a wide variety of transportation including land vehicles, trains, ships, aircraft, and spacecraft.
Process applications aim to provide a suitable environment for a process being carried out, regardless of internal heat and humidity loads and external weather conditions. Although often in the comfort range, it is the needs of the process that determine conditions, not human preference. Process applications include these:
Hospital operating theatres, in which air is filtered to high levels to reduce infection risk and the humidity controlled to limit patient dehydration. Although temperatures are often in the comfort range, some specialist procedures such as open heart surgery require low temperatures (about 18 °C, 64 °F) and others such as neonatal relatively high temperatures (about 28 °C, 82 °F).
Cleanrooms for the production of integrated circuits, pharmaceuticals, and the like, in which very high levels of air cleanliness and control of temperature and humidity are required for the success of the process.
Facilities for breeding laboratory animals. Since many animals normally only reproduce in spring, holding them in rooms at which conditions mirror spring all year can cause them to reproduce year round.
Aircraft air conditioning. Although nominally aimed at providing comfort for passengers and cooling of equipment, aircraft air conditioning presents a special process because of the low air pressure outside the aircraft.
Data processing centers
Textile factories
Physical testing facilities
Plants and farm growing areas
Nuclear facilities
Chemical and biological laboratories
Mines
Industrial environments
Food cooking and processing areas
In both comfort and process applications the objective may be to not only control temperature, but also humidity, air quality, air motion, and air movement from space to space.Refrigeration air conditioning equipment usually reduces the humidity of the air processed by the system. The relatively cold (below the dewpoint) evaporator coil condenses water vapor from the processed air, (much like an ice cold drink will condense water on the outside of a glass), sending the water to a drain and removing water vapor from the cooled space and lowering the relative humidity. Since humans perspire to provide natural cooling by the evaporation of perspiration from the skin, drier air (up to a point) improves the comfort provided. The comfort air conditioner is designed to create a 40% to 60% relative humidity in the occupied space. In food retailing establishments large open chiller cabinets act as highly effective air dehumidifying units.
Some air conditioning units dry the air without cooling it, and are better classified as dehumidifiers. They work like a normal air conditioner, except that a heat exchanger is placed between the intake and exhaust. In combination with convection fans they achieve a similar level of comfort as an air cooler in humid tropical climates, but only consume about a third of the electricity. They are also preferred by those who find the draft created by air coolers discomforting.It should be noted that in a thermodynamically closed system, any energy input into the system that is being maintained at a set temperature (which is a standard mode of operation for modern air conditioners) requires that the energy removal rate from the air conditioner increase . This increase has the effect that for each unit of energy input into the system (say to power a light bulb in the closed system) requires the air conditioner to remove that energy. In order to do that the air conditioner must increase its consumption by the inverse of its efficiency times the input unit of energy. As an example presume that inside the closed system a 100 watt light bulb is activated, and the air conditioner has an efficiency of 200%. The air conditioner's energy consumption will increase by 50 watts to compensate for this, thus making the 100 W light bulb utilise a total of 150 W of energy.
Note that it is typical for air conditioners to operate at "efficiencies" of significantly greater than 100%, see Coefficient of performance.