Air compressors are great tools for industry and for around the house. They make many jobs more efficient and industry would be hard pressed to find a substitute. But, like all machines, they are bound to break down from time to time, and our useful air compressor is not an exception of the rule. This is where air compressor troubleshooting begins. Here are a few tips to keep your compressor in good working condition...
An air conditioner is one of the useful inventions of the modern times that greatly benefited mankind. It is due to an air conditioner that has enabled people to live and work in hotter parts of earth and when this commodity was added to automobiles people could commute with comfort and luxury.
Your car air conditioning system might look tricky but it is not impossible to understand its components and working. Moreover you can service some of its part and maintain its functioning.
An air conditioner works in a fashion similar to any cooling device. A hydrochlorofluorocarbon gas refrigerant that is Freon is pumped in a sealed cooling assembly. There this gas is compressed by the compressor and its temperature increases due to the heat it absorbs from the atmosphere. The heat absorbed is then dissipated when this pressurized hot gas is circulated through a series of tubes. The decrease in temperature is due to the physical phenomena that heat travels from hotter to a colder region but that’s not the point here. The pressure is then reduced and this sudden decompression causes the gas to get really cold and turn in to a liquid. This is how you get the cool draft from the air conditioner.
This refrigeration system with a very little modification was then adopted for the automotive air conditioning. Freon (R-12) was discovered to be harmful for the earth’s ozone layer and in case of an accidental leakage it can damage the ozone layer, so instead of Freon a harmless though lesser effective refrigerant R-134a is employed in an car’s air conditioning system. Due to this it is possible to work on your own automotive air conditioning compressor system without a license as R-134 is safer and not harmful. Some cars still have a R-12 but they can be easily converted to R-134a.
The major components of an air conditioning system are a compressor, a condenser, an evaporator, refrigeration lines and a few sensors.
Automotive air contidioning compressor: This is the most important part of your a/c system, it can be considered as heart of an air conditioner. It is operated by a engine belt, and also contains an electrically controlled clutch that turns it on and off as required to achieve the desired cooling. As the name suggests it compresses (pressurizes) the refrigerant gas.
Condenser: The miniature radiator mounted in the engine next to the radiator of your car is called a condenser. It may have it own cooling fan or sometimes is placed in front of the car’s radiators and shares the radiator’s cooling fan. It cools the hot compressed air when it passes through it and turns it in to a liquid.
Evaporator: An evaporator looks like a smaller radiator and works opposite to a condenser. The super cooled liquid passes through it’s tubes and the blower blows air through these tubes, this causes the air to get cooler and this cold air is what u feel on your forehead. When it warms up the refrigerant is transformed back to its gaseous state.
Thermal Expansion Valve: This valve is meant to regulate the temperature by controlling the flow of super cooled liquid to the evaporator. There are a wide variety of valves available but they all do the same task.
Drier or accumulator: The drier is the component that protects any liquid from accidently entering and damaging your compressor. A compressor is only meant to compress a gas, a droplet of moisture and it can malfunction and get damaged. The driers job is to catch any moisture and prevent it from entering the compressor. The drier absorbs the moisture chemically using a desiccant similar to silica gel that is placed in the box which contains electronic gadgets. In addition to this, a drier has a filter that catches any other impurity in the refrigerant gas.