JP2002139272A - Cooling system alternative to dry ice - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To find a system alternative to dry ice or ecoice. SOLUTION: In a system where a cold accumulator is contained in a containing frame in which a cavity is formed as the cold accumulator is contained or in a cold accumulator having a cavity, air flow generated from an air flow generator is supplied to the cavity.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a cooling system using a regenerator.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art There is a regenerator having a temperature range of 0 ° C. to −55 ° C., but there is only an eco ice as a system for obtaining cool air using ice at 0 ° C. However, eco-ice is not a system for obtaining cool air using commercially available cold storage units.

[0003]

There is a need for a system for obtaining cool air using a handy regenerator and a system for obtaining ultra-low temperature cool air in place of dry ice.

[0004]

According to the present invention, there is provided a means for efficiently obtaining cool air using a handy (volume of 0.5 to 2 L) constant temperature regenerator, and a method for producing an extremely low temperature of -30 ° C to -55 ° C. We figured out a way to get it. Here, the constant temperature regenerator refers to a regenerator having a single or at most three melting points and a melting point of 0 ° C. or less. Specifically, it is obtained by freezing an aqueous solution of potassium chloride, ammonium chloride, ammonium sulfate, ammonium nitrate, salt, a mixture thereof, sulfate, polyethylene glycol, or the like. First, in the present invention, it has been found that airflow and cavities are essential requirements for the above means. In general, for example,
It is easy to think that cold air of -33 ° C can be obtained from a regenerator at -33 ° C, but this is not the case. In order to obtain cold air, a gap or a cavity between the regenerators is required, and this is made possible by flowing an air flow therethrough. In order to obtain the cool air most efficiently, a cavity surrounded by a regenerator is essential.

[0005] First, the regenerator according to the present invention is one in which a liquid having a melting point near the freezing point is sealed in a container and frozen. In particular, the melting point is close to −15 ° C. (for example, ammonium chloride,
(Which are regenerators of ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate) are important because they are useful in household freezers. The volume is generally 100ml ~
It means up to 2L, but this is a measure of each unit,
If the units are aggregated and cannot be separated, the total may exceed this.

[0006] The airflow generator is divided into airflow generation by a fan and airflow generation by a pump. In the former, an airflow is generated by the rotating blades, and the airflow is guided to a gap of the regenerator or a cavity described later. When considering the inside of a freezer, stirring the whole inside of the freezer with a fan does not fall under the present invention. In this case, since a low temperature cannot be obtained, an air current must be flowed between the regenerators. In the pump system, there is an air pump which sucks air from one side and discharges air from the other side. An air compressor is a type of air pump and will be included. The air pump system is superior in efficiency to the fan system.

[0007] A cavity is a space surrounded by a regenerator and must be able to pass airflow. Therefore, there will be an inlet and an outlet. There is no need to always have an inlet and an outlet, and the inlet and the outlet may be controlled temporally, or the inlet and the outlet may be opened by pressure control.

A configuration in which regenerators and regenerators are arranged with a gap therebetween (which may be vertical or horizontal) can be considered as a kind of cavity.
Most structurally simple. However, in this case, for example, the temperature must be higher than the lowest temperature (−30 ° C.) obtained from the cold storage body having a surface temperature of −30 ° C.

Therefore, it is essential to make the cavity more full-scale and provide a distance in a specific direction. In this case, there is either a unit cool storage unit and a storage frame as a frame for accommodating a large number of the cool storage units, or a single cool storage unit container is designed from the beginning. FIG. 1b shows the former.
This is because there is a frame in which a cool storage body is stored, whereby a cavity is naturally formed, and an airflow flows in a specific direction in the cavity. There may be one outlet or several outlets, but in the case of one outlet, the lowest temperature can be obtained, and in the case of several outlets, cooling can be performed as widely as possible.

FIG. 1D shows the regenerator itself having a hollow structure from the beginning. However, in this case, the regenerator has a disadvantage that it is difficult to use it for other purposes.

[0011] If the regenerator body is made of a material having an extremely high thermal conductivity, such as a metal, a lower temperature air flow can be obtained. Since the metal itself is easily damaged by the liquid of the regenerator, the inner surface is preferably coated with a film of nylon, polyolefin, or the like.

When the cavity has a rough surface, a saw-like shape, a fin-like shape, or a swash-like shape, a low-temperature airflow can be obtained more stably than a smooth surface.

The above-described cooling system can be applied to a case where the cooling system is installed in a room where the temperature is room temperature and the regenerator itself is obtained by freezing in another freezer. Installing the cooling system in a freezer or refrigerator. The purpose of installing the cooling system in the refrigerator is to eliminate the temperature fluctuation due to the opening and closing of the door in the refrigerator and prevent the quality of the product from deteriorating. This is the establishment of a new type of eco-ice in a general freezer, in which a cold storage body is frozen in a freezer using nighttime electric power, and the freezer is cooled in the daytime by the above-described cooling system, thereby reducing the power required for freezing.

The temperature fluctuation due to the opening and closing of the door is much larger than expected, and there is a remarkable deterioration of the product due to repetition of the temperature fluctuation. The economic effect of the cooling system of the present invention which can prevent the fluctuation is great. A cooling system in such a general refrigerator-freezer has not been established so far. This is because, even if the regenerator is simply installed in the refrigerator, the effect of reducing the temperature fluctuation is small, and the same effect is obtained even when the refrigerator is stirred. This is only possible with the idea of passing the airflow directly through the cavity formed by the regenerator as in the present invention. The cooling system operates in conjunction with the opening and closing of the door, or it can be connected to a temperature sensor so that the system operates when the internal temperature rises.

In the present cooling system, the temperature of the airflow at the outlet drops to near the surface temperature of the regenerator. Therefore, it becomes possible to commercialize the eco ice in the refrigerator. And -30 ° C ~
If a cooling system of -55 ° C is established and integrated with a freezer, the possibility of dry ice replacement will be opened. Frozen food requires a temperature of −30 ° C. or lower, and it has been desired to put such an ultra-low temperature cooling system to practical use.

Further, in the case of a cooling system using a regenerator at about -5 ° C. to -16 ° C. in a refrigerator, freezing is performed in a freezing room of a home refrigerator, and then, freezing is performed at about −15 ° C. If a cooling system is installed for a refrigerator using -5 ° C. to -13 ° C. for a freezer using, the temperature rise in the refrigerator due to opening and closing of a door can be compensated immediately. Performing this refrigerator cooling system on ice is slow and impractical. Further, the temperature compensation in the freezer has no effect unless the temperature is around -15 ° C.

An ultra-low temperature regenerator as an alternative to dry ice is obtained by freezing three kinds of liquids, magnesium chloride (-32 ° C), calcium chloride (-51 ° C), and zinc chloride (-55 ° C). The former two have high human body safety and high thermal conductivity, and are therefore optimal as the ultra-low temperature cooling system of the present invention.

[0018]

Example 1 An aluminum plate having a thickness of 1 mm
I made a frame like this. Next, the regenerator was stored (FIG. 1).
b). The regenerator is a translucent polyethylene container (length 13.
550 ml of a 30% magnesium chloride aqueous solution was put in 5 cm × 20 cm × 2.5 cm in height) and frozen in dry ice. The cold storage container has a structure in which a cavity is formed in the center when two protrusions are joined together as shown in FIG. 1A.

[0019]

Embodiment 2 Aluminum plate (length 60 cm, width 28 c)
m) was 135 cm at the bottom and bent concavely so as to be 7 cm higher on each of the left and right sides to form a storage frame. There, the regenerators of Example 1 were stacked in two stages to form cavities in the same manner as in Example 1, and three of them were arranged side by side, for a total of six. Medical Freezer (Myosan Sanyo / MDF-
235 ・ Capacity 222L ・ Inner diameter 44cm × W 79cm ×
(71.5 cm height), and the freezer temperature was set to -30 ° C. (A) An outside air stream was blown in from one opening of the cavity formed by the storage frame and the regenerator with an air compressor, and a thermometer was inserted at a height of 55 cm of the freezer to measure the temperature.
(B) Rotating fan made by Sanyo (Mini Ace 109-
040 VL) was placed in a freezer and placed in front of one opening of the cavity to generate an airflow, and the airflow was sent into the cavity to measure the temperature. (C) The temperature in a state where no air flow was generated was measured. FIG. 2 shows the temperature changes of (A), (B), and (C) with the upper lid opened because it is a horizontal freezer. From now on, (A) of the present invention is up to 7 minutes, (B)
Although the set temperature is almost maintained even if the door is opened up to 10 minutes in (C), the temperature rises immediately in (C).

Next, even if the freezer temperature is set to -20.degree.
It was examined whether the temperature inside the refrigerator could be kept close to -30 ° with the door closed. As a result, when the air was not blown in (C), the temperature in the refrigerator decreased only -21.5 ° C.
The temperature dropped to -28 ° C even when the outside air was blown in (A). In the cold air circulation in the refrigerator (C), the temperature dropped to -29 ° C. Even if the inside of the refrigerator is set at −20 ° C. as described above, the temperature of the refrigerator inside is reduced by −3 ° C. by the cold storage of −30 ° C. in the present invention.
It was found that the temperature could be maintained near 0 ° C.

[0021]

Example 3 In the storage frame type regenerator of Example 2, the regenerator was replaced with a regenerator (-16 ° C.) obtained with a 25% by weight ammonium chloride solution. Put this in a room at 25 ° C,
First, it was confirmed by a thermometer that the temperature in the cavity was −16 ° C. Next, the miniace of Example 2 was placed at one of the cavity entrances, and the cavity entrance area was 75 cm at a wind speed of 13 m / min.
As a result of measuring the temperature just after the cavity exit,
Under the optimal conditions, cold air of -11.5 ° C was obtained. Next, in the case where irregularities having a height of 3 mm and a width of 3 mm are heat-sealed with an ethylene / vinyl acetate copolymer on the inner surface of the cavity, -13 is used.
C. cold air was obtained.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 shows a cooling system in which a regenerator is formed so as to form a cavity in an aluminum storage frame, and a regenerator having a cavity by itself a regenerator slope b front view c b of the cooling system stored in a storage frame D is a cross-sectional view of a cold storage body having a cavity itself.

Fig. 2 Checking the effect of air blowing

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Projection 2 Frame 3 Cold storage unit 4 units 5 Fan 6 Motor 7 Air flow 8 Cavity 9 Inside temperature curve when outside air from an air compressor is flowed into the cold storage unit cavity 10 Inside air supply to the cold storage unit cavity by the internal fan Temperature curve in the case of flowing air 11 Temperature curve in the refrigerator when only air is stored and no air flows at all

Claims (10)

[Claims] 1. A cooling system comprising: a constant-temperature regenerator, a frame capable of accommodating the regenerators with a gap therebetween, and an airflow generator. 2. The cooling system according to claim 1, wherein when the regenerator is stored in the storage frame, a hollow structure is formed, and an airflow from the airflow generator can pass through the hollow. 3. The cooling system according to claim 2, wherein the regenerator itself forms the hollow structure, and no storage frame is required. 4. The cooling system according to claim 1, wherein the regenerator container is made of metal. 5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the surface of the cavity is uneven.
The cooling system according to 2, 3, or 4. 6. The cooling system according to claim 1, wherein the cooling system is installed in a freezer or a refrigerator. 7. The cooling system according to claim 6, wherein a switch of the airflow generator is linked with a temperature of a door or a refrigerator inside the freezer or the refrigerator. 8. The cooling system according to claim 6, wherein the freezer or the refrigerator has a horizontal shape, that is, a refrigerator having a door above. 9. The regenerator according to claim 1, wherein said regenerator has a specific temperature within a range of -30 ° C. to -55 ° C.
The cooling system according to 6, 7, or 8. 10. The cooling system according to claim 9, wherein the liquid of the regenerator is magnesium chloride or calcium chloride.