Your car’s air-conditioning system consists of five main parts: the compressor, the condenser, the accumulator (or receiver-drier), the expansion valve (or orifice tube), and the evaporator. It works in a loop, starting with a fluid called the refrigerant, which you might know as AC gas. The refrigerant, which is just gas at this stage, gets squeezed by the compressor (a pump driven by your car’s engine through a belt).
This squeezing action heats up the refrigerant and pressurizes it. After leaving the compressor, the hot, pressurized gas moves to the condenser, which is at the front of your car, near the radiator. As the car moves, air flows over the condenser’s coils, cooling the refrigerant down. This process turns the refrigerant from a hot gas into a cooler liquid.
Before the refrigerant can continue, it passes through a filter called the accumulator (or receiver-drier in some systems). This part removes any moisture or dirt from the refrigerant. Removing moisture is important because water in the system could freeze and block the flow or cause damage.
Now, as a liquid but still under high pressure, the refrigerant arrives at the expansion valve (or orifice tube). This part controls how much refrigerant gets into the evaporator. It drops the pressure of the refrigerant, causing it to cool down further and turn back into a gas.
Finally, the evaporator gets to work. Located inside the car’s dashboard, it extracts heat from the air inside the vehicle, cooling it. Then, a fan blows this cooled air back into the car.
