Development of Automotive Air Conditioning and Development of Automotive Air Conditioning Technology
The world's first car was born in 1886, but the first car air conditioner did not appear until 1927. At that time, there were only heaters and ventilation systems in automobile air conditioning. In 1939, Packard Motor Company of the United States provided the first method to cool the air in the car by refrigeration. After the Second World War, automobile air conditioning has been greatly improved in technology and quantity. At present, automobile air conditioning has been widely used in modern automobiles. It can not only improve the driver's working conditions and driving safety, but also improve the car grade and ride comfort. Automotive air conditioning is no longer a luxury, but one of the important signs of automobile modernization. At present, the air conditioning installation rate of passenger cars in the United States and Japan has reached more than 90%. Although the automobile air conditioning technology in China started late, it has developed rapidly in recent years.
In addition to being widely used in cars, automobile air conditioning is also widely used in buses, engineering vehicles, tourist cars and urban buses. With the continuous improvement of vehicle manufacturing level and people's needs, automotive air conditioning technology is also developing. High-performance refrigeration compressor, new heat exchanger, and automatic control technology are constantly emerging and widely used. Automotive air conditioning is one of the signs of automobile modernization and one of the important branches of air conditioning engineering. Automotive air conditioning technology includes cooling, heating, dehumidification, ventilation, purification, regulating wind speed, noise prevention and other technologies, which is one of the most comprehensive air conditioning technology in air conditioning. Automotive air conditioning technology is developing with the popularity of automobiles. Like other things, the development of automotive air conditioning technology has gone through five stages: single heating, single refrigeration, integration of cooling and heating, automatic control and computer control.
1) The first stage: single heating stage in 1925, the United States was the first to use the cooling water of automotive engines to heat through heaters. A relatively complete heating system consisting of heaters, fans and air filters did not appear until 1927. Heating systems were introduced in Europe in 1948 and in Japan in 1954. At present, in cold northern Europe and Northern Asia, automobile air conditioning still uses a single heating system.
2) The second stage: single refrigeration stage in 1939, Packard Automobile Company of the United States first installed mechanical refrigeration cooling air conditioning device on the car. This single refrigeration device only has the function of cooling. After World War II, the rapid economic development of the United States led to the rapid development of this kind of car with a single refrigeration device. It was not until 1957 that Europe and Japan began to install such a single refrigeration device on their cars. Single refrigeration method is still used in tropical and subtropical areas. For example, the air conditioning of taxis in Guangdong and other areas only has refrigeration function.
3) The third stage: in 1954, General Motors Corporation of the United States took the lead in installing integrated air-conditioning system for heating and cooling on cars. Its greatest feature is that it has the functions of heating and cooling at the same time. With the development of air conditioning technology, the current integrated air conditioning system has the functions of cooling, heating, dehumidification, ventilation, filtering and defrosting. At present, this kind of air conditioning is still widely used in economical cars.
4) Stage 4: In the automatic control stage, the air-conditioning system of the integrated cooling and heating automobile needs manual operation, which obviously increases the workload of the driver, and the control quality is not ideal. Therefore, since the emergence of integrated cooling and heating automotive air conditioning, people have begun to study automatic control of automotive air conditioning. In 1964, General Motors of the United States installed automatic control of automotive air conditioning on cars. In 1972, Japan and Europe began to install automatic air conditioning on high-end cars. As long as the temperature is set in advance, the automobile air conditioner can automatically work within the set temperature range. It can automatically control the work of each component according to the temperature information of the inside and outside environment detected by the sensor, so as to achieve the purpose of controlling the inside temperature of the car. At present, most middle and high-grade cars are equipped with automatic control of automobile air conditioning.
5) The fifth stage: the computer control stage in 1973, the United States General Motors Corporation and Japan Isuzu Automobile Company jointly studied the computer-controlled automobile air-conditioning, in 1977, the computer-controlled automobile air-conditioning was installed in their respective production vehicles. Comparing with the automatic air conditioning controlled by analog controller, the automobile air conditioning controlled by computer has the functions of digitization of display, integration of refrigeration, heating and ventilation, and intellectualization of fault diagnosis. At present, the automatic air-conditioning system of high-grade cars has formed a local area network with the body computer system. The computer can automatically control the air-conditioning system according to the environmental conditions inside and outside the car. Through computer control, not only the unification of air conditioning operation and automobile operation can be realized, but also the refrigeration effect can be improved, fuel can be saved and the overall performance of automobile can be improved. This kind of automatic air conditioning system with microprocessor as its control core has been widely used in high-grade cars and luxury buses, and gradually extended to ordinary cars.
The development of automobile air conditioning technology in China has gone through three stages. The first stage is from the beginning of 1960s to the end of 1970s. It mainly uses the heat generated by exhaust gas or cooling circulating water from automobile engine to heat the car. The second stage is from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. In the early 1980s, our country purchased the belt from Japan.
