What is Refrigeration?
The most widely used explanation of this question is “Refrigeration is a process in
which work is done to remove the heat from one location to another”. Let’s understand
this by one day-to-day example - If you were to place a hot cup of coffee on a table and
leave it for a while, the heat in the coffee would be transferred to the materials in contact
with the coffee, i.e. the cup, the table and the surrounding air. As the heat is transferred,
the coffee cools. Using the same principle, refrigeration works by removing heat from a
product and transferring that heat to the outside air. Refrigeration has many applications
including but not limited to; household refrigerators, industrial freezers, cryogenics, air
conditioning, and heat pumps. In order to satisfy the Second Law of Thermodynamics, some form of work must be performed to accomplish this. The work is traditionally done
by mechanical work but can also be done by magnetism, laser or other means.
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