Because the "opposite" of air conditioning is just a heat engine (taking "hot" and "cold" source, and using the difference to generate locomotion). In fact, all engines are glorified heat engines: be it a steam turbine, ICE, geothermal, or whatever
When air gets hot, it expands. When air gets cold, it contracts. So heat up air through some mechanism (hot side) to push a piston up. To pull the piston down, either use momentum or the cold-source (cold air contracts, pulling the stuff down).
The sterling engine is the best general purpose demonstration of this, and you can buy such engines for $20 to $100 or so.
ICE engines use gasoline as the hot source. Steam engines use steam (water at 100C) to transfer the heat from the hot source to the needed locations (heat can be from nuclear, coal, or other sources)
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Air conditioning is just this process in reverse. Expand the air forcibly by applying force to the piston. This cools down the air. "Gather" the coldness through some mechanism, which heats up your air inside the A/C unit while cooling whatever is on your "cold plate".
Push the hot air and compress it down. This heats up the air even further: "transfer" the hotness through some mechanism (aka: heat something else up, like the air outside the house). This cools down the air inside your A/C unit.
Now find a fluid that's more efficient at this process than oxygen. Then realize that fluid is terrible for the Ozone layer and write a regulation for a newer, crappier fluid that's less damaging to the Earth, and you have modern A/C units.
> It seems like you’re removing energy from the air.
You're just transferring the hotness somewhere else. Go feel the air that your refrigerator outputs: its far hotter than the air inside. If you measure the energy, its the energy that was "stolen" from inside the refrigerator + the energy "spent" on the heat pump (that compression / decompression cycle takes work, and work generates heat)
We can transfer heat around, but it costs energy. Alternatively, a difference in heat can be used to gather energy, but it will "Average" the temperatures and eventually the hot-source and cold-source will be the same temperature.
We can use fuels to make the hot-source stay really, really hot for long periods of time (as long as we have a source of fuel), and that's basically the design of steam engines / heat engines.
Because the "opposite" of air conditioning is just a heat engine (taking "hot" and "cold" source, and using the difference to generate locomotion). In fact, all engines are glorified heat engines: be it a steam turbine, ICE, geothermal, or whatever
When air gets hot, it expands. When air gets cold, it contracts. So heat up air through some mechanism (hot side) to push a piston up. To pull the piston down, either use momentum or the cold-source (cold air contracts, pulling the stuff down).
The sterling engine is the best general purpose demonstration of this, and you can buy such engines for $20 to $100 or so.
ICE engines use gasoline as the hot source. Steam engines use steam (water at 100C) to transfer the heat from the hot source to the needed locations (heat can be from nuclear, coal, or other sources)
----------
Air conditioning is just this process in reverse. Expand the air forcibly by applying force to the piston. This cools down the air. "Gather" the coldness through some mechanism, which heats up your air inside the A/C unit while cooling whatever is on your "cold plate".
Push the hot air and compress it down. This heats up the air even further: "transfer" the hotness through some mechanism (aka: heat something else up, like the air outside the house). This cools down the air inside your A/C unit.
Now find a fluid that's more efficient at this process than oxygen. Then realize that fluid is terrible for the Ozone layer and write a regulation for a newer, crappier fluid that's less damaging to the Earth, and you have modern A/C units.
> It seems like you’re removing energy from the air.
You're just transferring the hotness somewhere else. Go feel the air that your refrigerator outputs: its far hotter than the air inside. If you measure the energy, its the energy that was "stolen" from inside the refrigerator + the energy "spent" on the heat pump (that compression / decompression cycle takes work, and work generates heat)
We can transfer heat around, but it costs energy. Alternatively, a difference in heat can be used to gather energy, but it will "Average" the temperatures and eventually the hot-source and cold-source will be the same temperature.
We can use fuels to make the hot-source stay really, really hot for long periods of time (as long as we have a source of fuel), and that's basically the design of steam engines / heat engines.