Air conditioning system for vehicles and aircraft

The air conditioning system for a rail vehicle, road vehicle or aircraft comprises an input air circuit incorporating heating and a cooling circuit coupled by an air-to-air heat exchanger. In the context of a rail vehicle (10), the vehicle inner space (12) is air-conditioned by an air-supported air conditioning system (14) with the appropriate plant being installed in a compact module-type housing, located in the ceiling area of the vehicle. The functional principle of the system involves the so-called ''open less than atmospheric pressure process''. The input air circuit (16) is coupled to a cooling circuit (18) by an air-to-air heat exchanger (20). In the cooling circuit, air coming from the outside atmosphere is expanded by a turbine (22) and in accordance with cooling requirements is stagelessly cooled to temperatures around 0 degreees Celsius. In the heat exchanger, heat emitted from the input air circuit is fed to the process. The air heated at low pressure is aspirated by a compressor (24), compressed and returned outwards to the surrounding atmosphere.