Difference Between Air Conditioner And Dehumidifier

Air Conditioner vs Dehumidifier

Airconditioners are used as a home appliance to extract heat and humidity from an area. Dehumidifiers are used to reduce and maintain lower humidity levels in an area. These are generally used for health reasons. Although dehumidifiers are derived from Airconditioners they are only used to lower humidity. They generally do not cause any change in the ambient temperature.

In an airconditioner the air is moved over a refrigerated coil and re-circulated in the room. However, in a dehumidifier the air is circulated over a refrigerated coil to collect the excess moisture in the air by condensation and then reheated and circulated back.

The airconditioners handle the water collected from the condensation on the refrigerated coils by letting it drip outside the rooms. Some central airconditioning units need to be connected to drains for this purpose. Newer models of Airconditioners generally evaporate this collected water over the hot outer coils increasing efficiency. Dehumidifiers on the other hand do not have any outside unit hence the water needs to be handled internally. Bigger models may be tied up with the plumbing system of the building, however, the smaller models generally have small buckets that fill up and need to be emptied. Normally the dehumidifiers have sensors that can automatically shut off the machine when the buckets are full.

Where airconditioners can cool the room temperatures and act as dehumidifiers to some extent the dehumidifiers effectively control the humidity of the room making the air healthier. The reduced humidity reduces and controls the growth of mold in the room. Mold can cause a variety of health allergies and infections.

There are various types of Airconditioners in the market like window airconditioners, split airconditioners, central airconditioners and evaporative coolers to name a few. The basic principle of all the types is the same except for the evaporative coolers which are of a much simpler design and use water pads to cool the air and air ducts to circulate the air in the house. The dehumidifiers are of three types, namely, mechanical, desiccative and electronic. Mechanical work more or less in the same way as an airconditioner. The desiccative dehumidifiers are generally chemical based employing any desiccative material suitable to dehumidify. The electronic dehumidifiers use electronic heat pumps and are generally used for very small areas. These are extremely quiet to operate.

Summary
1. Main purpose of Airconditioners is to extract heat from an area whereas that of the dehumidifiers is to extract excess humidity.
2. Airconditioners let the water collected from the condensation on the cold coils drip outside or evaporate it on the hot coils whereas the water collected in the dehumidifiers needs to either be drained manually or it needs to be connected to plumbing.
3. Where the airconditioner provides a cool comfortable temperature the dehumidifier also addresses health issues by controlling the growth of mold.
4. Airconditioners generally only work on the mechanical principals whereas the dehumidifiers are available with mechanical, desiccative & electronic sytems.

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