Before investing in a portable air condition, I suggest researching the topic. Many if not most of them are dramatically less energy-efficient than window-mounted units.
One reason is that the warm air has to be exhausted to the exterior. For every cubic foot of air you exhaust, you pull in another hot and humid cubic foot of outside air. Worse, many of them do not allow for the exhaust air to be shut off when the compressor shuts off, so you keep throwing your cool, dry air away and pulling in hot, damp outside air all the time the unit is on.
As you might deduce, I’m not a fan.
Holy cow.
I haven’t researched this (which makes me the perfect person to comment on it :^), but I assumed that they kept the outside air, which cools the condenser, separate from the inside air, which is cooled by the evaporator (being the objective of this exercise).
That design would, of course, keep the outside air separate from the inside air, so the air it “pulled in” would go through the condenser and then right back out again, never exchanging with the inside air.
If this isn’t true, it’s just crazy.
That way you can, at least, sleep at night.
You’re correct Erasmus, the condenser is outside and the evaporator is inside, outside air stays outside and inside air stays inside. The only thing that circulates is liquid refrigerant to the evaporator (inside) and gaseous refrigerant to the condenser (outside).