Refrigerant facts for kids
A refrigerant is a special chemical that helps things get cold. You can find refrigerants inside your air conditioner, your refrigerator, and other cooling machines. These chemicals can be a liquid or a vapor (like a gas), depending on how warm they are and how much pressure they are under.
Most refrigerants in their liquid form will turn into a vapor very quickly if they are not under pressure. This is like how water boils and turns into steam, but refrigerants do it at much colder temperatures.
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How Refrigerants Work: The Cool Cycle
Refrigerants move through a closed loop inside cooling machines, changing from liquid to vapor and back again. This process is called the refrigeration cycle. Here's how it works:
The Compressor: Squeezing the Vapor
First, the refrigerant is a cold vapor. It goes into a part called the compressor. The compressor is like a pump that squeezes the refrigerant vapor. This squeezing makes the vapor very hot and increases its pressure.
The Condenser: Releasing Heat
Next, the hot, high-pressure refrigerant vapor moves into the condenser. The condenser is usually a coil of tubes with fins, often found outside your house for an air conditioner, or at the back of your fridge. As air passes over the condenser, it cools the hot refrigerant. When the refrigerant cools down enough, it turns back into a hot liquid. It releases all the heat it picked up earlier into the air around the condenser.
The Metering Device: Dropping the Pressure
After leaving the condenser, the hot liquid refrigerant goes through a small part called a metering device or expansion device. This device has a tiny opening that suddenly lowers the pressure of the liquid refrigerant. When the pressure drops, the liquid starts to boil and cool down a lot, becoming a very cold mix of liquid and vapor.
The Evaporator: Absorbing Heat
Now, the very cold refrigerant enters the evaporator. This is another coil of tubes, often inside your house (for an air conditioner) or inside your refrigerator. As warm air from the room or fridge passes over the cold evaporator coils, the refrigerant inside absorbs the heat from the air. This makes the air cooler. As the refrigerant absorbs heat, it completely turns back into a cold vapor.
Back to the Compressor: Starting Again
Once the refrigerant leaves the evaporator, it is all vapor again. It then goes back to the compressor, and the whole cycle starts over. This continuous cycle is what keeps your home cool or your food fresh!
Types of Refrigerants: Past and Present
For a long time, a type of refrigerant called Freon was very common. However, scientists discovered that some types of Freon were harmful to the Earth's ozone layer, which protects us from the sun's harmful rays. Because of this, many older refrigerants like some types of Freon are no longer used. Today, newer and safer refrigerants are used that do not harm the ozone layer.
Related pages
- Freon, an old class of refrigerants
Images for kids
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This graph shows how the amounts of different refrigerants (HCFCs and HFCs) have changed in Earth's atmosphere over time.
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This is a special chart for a refrigerant called R407C. It helps engineers understand how it behaves at different pressures and temperatures.
See also
In Spanish: Refrigerante (refrigeración) para niños
