A standard air conditioner involves a refrigerant that is typically now a fluorinated hydrocarbon, such as CH₂F₂. An air-conditioner refrigerant has the property that it readily vaporizes at atmospheric pressure and is easily compressed to its liquid phase under increased pressure. The operation of an air conditioner can be thought of as a closed system made up of the refrigerant going through the two stages shown here (the air circulation is not shown in this diagram).

During expansion, the liquid refrigerant is released into an expansion chamber at low pressure, where it vaporizes. The vapor then undergoes compression at high pressure back to its liquid phase in a compression chamber. (c) In a central air-conditioning system, one chamber is inside the home and the other is outside. Which chamber is where, and why?

Video transcript

Hello everyone today, we have the falling problem. The refrigerant used in air conditioning systems can easily undergo vaporization at atmospheric pressure and compression at higher pressures. The system then acts as a closed system consisting of the refrigerant undergoing these two stages. The vaporization occurs in an expansion chamber at low pressures. The compression of the vapor back to its liquid phase occurs in a compression chamber at high pressure. Which of the following statements is true based on this information. So we want to make note of a few key things. So one the expansion chamber. So the expansion chamber is inside the house and the compression chamber is outside the house. And so we set that here. When we have expansion, I started here and here. When we have expansion, the end energy of the system is going to increase and the energy of the surroundings is going to decrease. This basically means that the air surrounding the expansion chamber is going to be cooled and distributed throughout the house to cool it. And so if it occurred outside the cooler would essentially be wasted. The compression in this situation here simply releases heat to the environment so it's going to release heat to the surroundings. And so that's why it occurs outside so that the released heat can be dissipated in the outside air. And so based on that information, our answer is going to be be in a central air conditioning system. The expansion chamber is found inside the house and the compression chamber is found outside of the house. And with that we have our answer overall, I hope this helped, and until next time.