We have breezed through the air conditioning process via the AC compressor and onto the AC condenser. At this point in the process, the AC Orifice tube comes into play. Every air conditioning system has an orifice tube. Some have different names but their job is the same – to serve as a pressure drop device.
The orifice tube’s job is simple. It handles the highly pressurized refrigerant. Specifically, the orifice tube is responsible for reducing the refrigerant pressure. This goes hand in hand with the orifice tube’s ability to cool the refrigerant. The condenser cools the refrigerant by allowing the outside air to remove the heat. The orifice tube further cools the refrigerant down to approximately 32 degrees fahrenheit.
The drop of the temperature is the intended side effect of the drop in pressure initialized by the orifice tube. This “supercooling” of the refrigerant is needed so it can be prepared for maxumim heat absorption in the passenger department.
The pressure drop orifice tube is key because it is hard to keep the temperature at the perfect “sweet spot”. You want the temperature just high enough to prevent any moisture from freezing onto internal parts of the evaporator (more on this part later).
