In the broadest sense air conditioning can refer to any form of cooling, heating, ventilation or disinfection that modifies the condition of air, typically for thermal comfort. The more common use of air conditioning is to mean cooling and often dehumidification of indoor air, typically via refrigeration.

An air conditioner (AC or A/C) is an appliance, system, or mechanism designed to extract heat from an area using a refrigeration cycle. The most common uses of modern air conditioners are for comfort cooling in buildings and transportation vehicles including aircraft. When understanding how an air conditioning system works, there is one rule you have to keep in mind and that is:
Nothing is cold, only more or less heat
So, with this in mind, we are not trying to cool the cabin, rather we are simply removing the heat.

A simple diagram of a vapor cycle refrigerant system

  Heat is collected at the evaporator and removed at the condenser…