• Dave Coe@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Nope. An AC just moves temperatures around. If it heats one area, it cools another.

    • pm_me_your_titties@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Except it is not 100% efficient. It will have losses, which will add extra heat to the surrounding area over what was removed from the target area. Thus contributing to the increase of entropy in the universe. And bringing us one step closer to the heat death.

    • hperrin@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      ACs also generate heat as a waste product (they’re not 100% efficient), but I’m not sure that actually heats up the surrounding area to a noticeable degree.

      • Jojo, Lady of the West@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 months ago

        They’re more than 100% efficient (they move more watts of heat than they produce), but they’re less than ∞% efficient (they use Watts of energy still, so they still produce Watts of heat)

        • hperrin@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          100% efficient would mean they do their job without any waste heat. They create waste heat, therefore they are not 100% efficient.

          The only thing that is 100% efficient is an electric heater, because its job is to create heat, so it doesn’t create “waste heat”.

          • Jojo, Lady of the West@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            2 months ago

            A heat pump can heat a home by more than the energy in the electricity it uses. It’s more than 100% efficient at “converting electricity into heat in your home”. It does that by not actually covering electricity but by moving heat, and it is less than 100% efficient at converting electricity into motion, and introduces some waste heat

            • hperrin@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              The efficiency of a machine isn’t measured at how effective its job is, but how efficiently it does that job. If it moved heat without producing any waste heat, it would be 100% efficient. If it produces any waste heat at all it’s not 100% efficient. No machine can ever be more than 100% efficient. That would violate the laws of thermodynamics.

    • wabafee@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 months ago

      Yes your right should have been more clear. If AC moves hot air from a house. This hot air goes out then imagine hundreds of AC doing that. Would that in turn heat up the area around it.

      • teegus@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        As long as the temperature inside remains constant, as much cold leaks out as is transported inside. So the only residual heating outside would be from inefficiensies in the system, not the moving process itself.

      • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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        2 months ago

        To be extra clear: An AC transports the heat, not the hot air. It removes heat from the air and transfers that heat to the outside air.

        There’s also heat pumps that work with water instead of air. So they remove heat from the air and push it into water. This water can be a closed loop, or be open where the water is lost. It can also work the other way around where the heat pump takes heat from outside and pumps it into water, heating up the water to then be used for heating a home or taking a shower. There are also water-water pumps that work on water on both ends.

        Because heat pumps pump the actual thermal energy, the medium doesn’t really matter much.