Difference Between Capacitor and Condenser

 There are always misunderstanding in the case of capacitors and condensers as many people considered these are same. But there are some differences between capacitor and condenser.

From electrical engineering point of view, condensers and capacitors are the same. However, you may often come across condensers also being referred to as devices used to condense vapour into liquid, a range of laboratory glassware used to remove heat from fluids, heat exchangers installed in steam-electric power stations to condense turbine exhaust steam into water, air coils used in HVAC refrigeration systems, a group of lenses mounted below the stage of an optical microscope to concentrate light, and condenser microphones that convert sound waves into an electrical signal.

An ideal capacitor is characterised by a single constant value called ‘capacitance.’ This is defined as the ratio of the amount of charge in each conductor to the potential difference between them. The unit of capacitance is thus coulombs per volt, or farads. Higher capacitance indicates that more charge can be stored at a given voltage. In practice, the insulator allows a small amount of current through, called leakage current. The conductors add a series resistance (specifically called equivalent series resistance), and the insulator has an electric field strength limit resulting in a breakdown voltage.

The properties of capacitors in a circuit may determine the resonant frequency and quality factor of a resonant circuit, power dissipation and operating frequency in a digital logic circuit, energy capacity in a high-power system, and many other important aspects.