Patent ID: 7793711

Claim:
An air conditioner for a vehicle, comprising: a compressor for compressing refrigerant; an exterior heat exchanger for exchanging heat between outside air outside of a vehicle compartment and refrigerant flowing therethrough; a cooling decompressor for decompressing refrigerant in a cooling mode operation; an interior heat exchanger for exchanging heat between air to be blown into the vehicle compartment and refrigerant flowing therethrough; and a control unit for performing the cooling mode operation and a heating mode operation, wherein: the control unit performs the cooling mode operation with a cooling refrigeration cycle, in which refrigerant discharged from an outlet of the compressor is drawn to an inlet of the compressor after passing through the exterior heat exchanger, the cooling decompressor, and the interior heat exchanger in this order, so that the interior heat exchanger operates as an evaporator, in which the refrigerant evaporates by absorbing heat from air to be blown into the vehicle compartment; the control unit performs the heating mode operation with a hot gas heater cycle, in which refrigerant discharged from the outlet of the compressor flows through the interior heat exchanger while bypassing the exterior heat exchanger through a hot gas bypassing path, so that the interior heat exchanger operates as a radiator, which radiates heat to air to be blown into the vehicle compartment; the control unit performs a refrigerant collecting operation, in which refrigerant staying in the exterior heat exchanger is pushed out using refrigerant discharged from the compressor, before performing the heating mode operation; and the control unit performs an air blowing operation in which air is blown toward an inner surface of a windshield of the vehicle without driving the compressor, before performing the refrigerant collecting operation.