Evaporator temperatures below 32° are common and acceptable in refrigeration; that's why there is a defrost sequence. In a heat pump running in heat mode, it's the same; freezing is a part of the process, and defrost is necessary. In comfort cooling, we can't allow the evaporator to get below 32°, or it will freeze. […]

The HVAC industry uses all sorts of fancy words to classify refrigerant. As such, there are all sorts of complicated refrigerant acronyms: HFC, HCFC, CFC. Let's also not forget the mythical zeotropic, azeotropic, and near-azeotropic descriptors. Let's simplify those. (Though if you want to go back to the basics first, check out this article on […]

  The second law of thermodynamics puts the first law into context and establishes entropy as a concept. We can simply define entropy as a state of disorder that can only increase or remain the same in natural processes. Processes in which entropy remains the same are reversible, but ones that result in an entropy […]