What do room air conditioners compress if they don't use refrigerant to transfer heat?

Question

What do room air conditioners compress if they don't use refrigerant to transfer heat?

Answer 1

Nothing. The refrigerant is the means by which heat is transferred from one space to another. If there is no refrigerant, then all you have is a big lump of various types of metal and plastics. It would become a very large paper weight, or door stop.

It would appear that a study of how a refrigerator, or air conditioner works might be a study that you would do well to pursue.

By the way, "refrigerant" is the proper term, while "freon" is the common term. They both, at least to the 'layman' refer to the same working fluid in a refrigeration cycle machine. Even using a salt brine for cooling, a refrigeration machine is used if ice is not used to cool the salt brine.

Answer 2

Actually Freon should always be capitalized and also accompanied by the word refrigerant because it is a registered trade name owned by DuPont. The trade name by Allied Chemical for its line of refrigerants is Suva. DuPont has not generally pursued trademark violations of Freon because , like Aspirin, it is good advertising for everybody to think it is the only one. And so it has become common.