How does a Refrigerator work?
Most modern water coolers and refrigerators adopt the physics and science of heat transfer, providing safe and effective cooling. It is the physics of evaporation which gives us the ability to transfer heat with relative ease. As liquids or fluids evaporate, they absorb energy from their surroundings in the form of heat, to enable them to change state into a gas.
Exactly the same process is at work when our bodies perspire. Water on our skin evaporates, absorbing heat energy, and leaving our bodies cooler.
Refrigerator Cooling System
In any water cooler or modern refrigerator, a ‘refrigerant’ is compressed and circulated around inside a sealed regenerating system. This compressed fluid refrigerant is passed through an expansion gate which forces it to expand into a gas. The refrigerant, now flowing through pipes inside a sealed compartment or vessel, absorbs heat from its surrounding and continues to flow around the system to transfer this absorbed heat outside to the external environment.
Refrigerating systems in the late 1800s until 1929 used toxic gases like ammonia (NH3) as refrigerants. These were responsible for several fatal incidents and subsequently dropped by manufacturers in favour of newly developed Freon. This was used until the damaging environmental impact of CFC’s on the Ozone Layer were discovered, and today modern refrigerants are both non toxic and environmentally friendly.
