Nope. A condenser has no moving parts. What would get ruined is the compressor.

To piggyback on what Bill explained, this is how an AC unit or regfrigerator works.

The cycle starts with a gas at room temperature. Simple physics here: any substance has a certain amount of energy in it, which can be measured as heat or temperature. A cubic foot of air at 75 F has a certain amount of heat in it. Now, if you compress that cubic foot of air to one tenth or one twentieth of that volume, all of the heat is still there. But it gets concentrated. Consequently the measured heat of the smaller volume of air goes up dramatically.

The gas we use in these machines becomes a liquid at a certain pressure. The liquid then goes through a series of cooling fins (look on the back of your refrigerator. Lots of long skinny tubes (which means a great ratio of surface area to volume. The hot liquid cools down to room temperature.

Then the cooled liquid goes into an expansion chamber, where it expands back to the original volume. But the heat that was there originally is gone. So the expanded volume is MUCH colder. The very cold gas is piped through another series of thin pipes where it sucks up the heat that is in and around the pipes. That's how the coils in your freezer and refrigerator get cold!

Then, the warmed-up gas goes back to the compressor where it is compressed again and condenses into a liquid in the condenser.

You have just pumped the heat from the refrigerator into the air behind it. That's why you have to make sure there is good air circulation behind your refrigerator and that those external pipes (coils) are free of dust. The heat has to be able to go somewhere.


TEd