Condenser (laboratory)
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In chemistry, a condenser is laboratory apparatus used to condense vapors – that is, turn them into liquids – by cooling them down.
A distillation setup using a Liebig-type condenser (the tilted double-walled tube at the center). A liquid (not visible) in the flask at left is heated by the blue mantle to the boiling point. The vapor is then cooled as it goes through the inner tube of the condenser. There it becomes liquid again, and drips into the smaller collecting flask at right, immersed in a cooling bath. The two hoses connected to the condenser circulate water through the space between the inner and outer walls.
A glass still head, upside down. The rounded part was meant to be fitted on the top of the boiling flask. Black-and-white photo of object at the Wellcome Trust museum.
Condenser (heat transfer)
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In systems involving heat transfer, a condenser is a heat exchanger used to condense a gaseous substance into a liquid state through cooling. In so doing, the latent heat is released by the substance and transferred to the surrounding environment. Condensers are used for efficient heat rejection in many industrial systems. Condensers can be made according to numerous designs and come in many sizes ranging from rather small (hand-held) to very large. For example, a refrigerator uses a condenser to get rid of heat extracted from the interior of the unit to the outside air.
Condenser unit for central air conditioning for a typical house
Rooftop condenser unit fitted on top of an Osaka Municipal Subway 10 series subway carriage (April 2008)