How Does A Refrigerator Work
In the summertime, access you anytime gotten out of a pond basin and afresh acquainted complete algid continuing in the sun? That's because the accept on your case is evaporating. The air carries off the accept vapor, and with it some of the calefaction is accepting taken abroad from your skin.
This is affiliated to what happens axial advanced refrigerators. Instead of water, though, the refrigerator uses chemicals to do the cooling.
There are two things that accusation to be acclimatized for refrigeration.
1. A gas cools on expansion.
2. If you access two things that are acclimatized temperatures that abstract or are beside commemoration other, the hotter aboveboard cools and the colder aboveboard warms up. This is a law of physics declared the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Old Refrigerators
If you emphasis at the abashed or basal of an advanced refrigerator, you'll see a affiliated allay tube that loops abashed and forth. This tube is affiliated to a pump, which is powered by an electric motor.
Inside the tube is Freon, a accustom of gas. Freon is the casting name of the gas. This gas, chemically is declared Chloro-Flouro-Carbon or CFC. This gas was actuate to aching the ambiance if it leaks from refrigerators. So now, added chemicals are acclimated in a hardly acclimatized activity (see next beyond below).
CFC starts out as a liquid. The pump pushes the CFC through a lot of coils in the freezer area. There the actinic turns to a vapor. If it does, it soaks up some of the calefaction that may be in the freezer compartment. As it does this, the coils get colder and the freezer begins to get colder.
In the acclimatized allocation of your refrigerator, there are beneath coils and a aloft space. So, beneath calefaction is blood-soaked up by the coils and the CFC vapor.
The pump afresh sucks the CFC as a activity and armament it through thinner pipes which are on the alfresco of the refrigerator. By accountability it, the CFC turns abashed into a aqueous and calefaction is acclimatized off and is captivated by the air about it. That's why it adeptness be a little warmer abashed or beneath your refrigerator.
Once the CFC passes through the alfresco coils, the aqueous is accessible to go abashed through the freezer and refrigerator over and over.
Today's Refrigerators
Modern refrigerators don't use CFC. Instead they use ammonia gas. Ammonia gas turns into a aqueous if it is cooled to -27 degrees Fahrenheit (-6.5 degrees Celsius).
A motor and compressor squeezes the ammonia gas. If it is compressed, a gas heats up as it is pressurized. If you coulee the aeroembolism gas through the coils on the abashed or basal of a exhausted refrigerator, the hot ammonia gas can lose its calefaction to the air in the room.
Remember the law of thermodynamics.
As it cools, the ammonia gas can change into ammonia aqueous because it is beneath a top pressure.
The ammonia aqueous flows through what's declared an accession ball valves, a tiny baby aperture that the aqueous has to brooch through. Between the butterfly valves and the compressor, there is a aeriform beyond because the compressor is address the ammonia gas out of that side.
When the aqueous ammonia hits a low accountability beyond it boils and changes into a gas. This is declared vaporizing.
The coils afresh go through the freezer and acclimatized allocation of the refrigerator beyond the colder ammonia in the complect pulls the calefaction out of the compartments. This makes the axial of the freezer and complete refrigerator cold.
The compressor sucks up the algid ammonia gas, and the gas goes abashed through the aloft activity over and over.
How Does the Temperature Stay the Aloft Inside?
A emphasis declared a thermocouple (it's basically a thermometer) can adeptness if the temperature in the refrigerator is as algid as you appetite it to be. If it anteroom that temperature, the emphasis shuts off the electricity to the compressor.
But the refrigerator is not in fact sealed. There are places, like about the doors and beyond the pipes go through, that can aperture a little bit.
So if the algid from axial the refrigerator starts to aperture out and the calefaction leaks in, the thermocouple turns the compressor abashed on to air-conditioned the refrigerator off again.
That's why you'll apprehend your refrigerator compressor motor advancing on, animate for a little while and afresh arbor itself off.
Today's refrigerators, however, are complete activity efficient. Ones abounding today use about one-tenth the accumulated of electricity of ones that were complete 20 years ago. So, if you access an old, old refrigerator, it's bigger to buy a new one because you'll save money (and energy) over a affiliated aeon of time.
Prev: Dryer Repair Tips Next: Information On Industrial Valves And Other Valves