How much fuel does a car consume when running the air conditioning for one hour?
1 Answers
For a typical family sedan, running the air conditioning for one hour consumes approximately 1-3 liters of fuel. The car air conditioning system operates through four cyclical processes: 1. Compression process: The compressor draws in low-temperature, low-pressure refrigerant gas from the evaporator outlet and compresses it into high-temperature, high-pressure gas before discharging it from the compressor. 2. Heat dissipation process: The high-temperature, high-pressure superheated refrigerant gas enters the condenser, where it condenses into a liquid due to the reduction in pressure and temperature, releasing a significant amount of heat. 3. Throttling process: The higher-temperature and higher-pressure refrigerant liquid passes through the expansion device, causing its volume to increase and its pressure and temperature to drop sharply, exiting the expansion device as a mist (fine droplets). 4. Heat absorption process: The mist-like refrigerant liquid enters the evaporator. Since the boiling point of the refrigerant is much lower than the temperature inside the evaporator, the refrigerant liquid evaporates into a gas, absorbing a large amount of surrounding heat in the process. The resulting low-temperature, low-pressure refrigerant vapor then re-enters the compressor. These processes repeat continuously to achieve the goal of lowering the temperature of the air around the evaporator.
