JP3301946B2 - Air conditioner or air purifier - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to incorporating an ion generator for generating negative ions into an air conditioner or an air purifier.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art It has been known that negative ions have a good effect on the human body, and they are used for improving physiological effects and for medical therapy. Further, as shown in Japanese Patent Publication No. Hei 7-23777 as a conventional example, negative ions and positive ions are alternately generated by an ion generator incorporated in an air conditioner, and the amount of negative ions in the room is adjusted by an ion sensor. The detailed structure of the ion sensor was not shown.

[0003]

The ion sensor generally used in the past is manufactured as a measuring device and has high measurement accuracy but is very expensive, and is used by being incorporated in an air conditioner or an air purifier. Was unsuitable for Also, it was difficult for users to know how much ions are being generated in the indoor air.

[0004]

In order to solve the above-mentioned drawbacks, the present invention focuses on this point, and in particular, the structure of the present invention is to provide a high-voltage generating circuit and a blower fan in a housing to blow air from an inlet to an outlet. A radiation electrode for generating ions is provided in the vicinity of a path or a blowing path, and an ion sensor is provided in the suction port to control the ion generator with the amount of ions detected by the ion sensor. The ion sensor is integrated with an antenna. together constitute at the circuit and the bridge circuit and the amplifier circuit, before
A display unit is provided on the surface of the housing to receive signals from the ion sensor.
And the amount of ions is displayed in a graph.

[0005]

[Operation] Operation switch (not shown) of the operation unit 20 is turned on.
As a result, the air conditioner starts operating, the compressor (not shown) provided in the outdoor unit rotates, and the refrigerant circulates in the refrigeration circuit. The heat exchanger 8 is heated during heating, is cooled during cooling, and the fan 9 Is started, the room air sucked from the suction port 4 is heated or cooled by the heat exchanger 8 and blown out from the blowout port 6.

Thereafter, when an ion generation switch (not shown) in the operation section 20 is turned on, the relay 27 is turned on, and the ion generator 17 is operated for 10 minutes and the intermittent operation is stopped for 1 minute as described above. Thus, the negative ions floating around the air conditioner and the surface of the housing are attenuated, so that the charged dust and smoke are less likely to adhere to the product and surrounding walls. The resulting -8 kv
As a result, about 10,000 negative ions are generated per 1 cc by a pulse wave having a width of 4 μSec, and the ion lamp 38 of the display unit 15 is turned on to display the current amount of ions to the user in an easy-to-understand manner.

The user changes the capacity of the capacitor C4 by an ion amount adjustment switch provided in the operation unit 20 to adjust the amount of ions per time according to the user's preference by looking at the display. Thereafter, the amount of generation is automatically finely adjusted by the ion sensor 21, so that harmful ozone is hardly generated, and only a certain amount of negative ions having a good effect on the human body can be used. .

[0008]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. Reference numeral 1 denotes an indoor unit of a separate type air conditioner, wherein a casing is formed by a main body casing 2 and a front cover 3 at the front. An open panel 5 having a horizontally elongated slit-shaped suction port 4 is provided from the center of the front cover 3 to the upper part thereof. A horizontally long outlet 6 is provided on the bottom surface of the front cover 3 from below the suction port 4, and an upper suction port 7 is provided on the upper surface of the front cover 3 in order to compensate for an opening area short of the suction port 4.

A fin tube type heat exchanger 8 is provided inside the suction ports 4 and 7 in a horizontally long and vertically bent manner.
A cross-flow fan 9 for blowing air is disposed at the rear of the heat exchanger 8. A drain unit 10 integrally formed of a resin foam material is provided below the heat exchanger 8 to receive dew water and blow air from a fan 9 to an outlet 6.
It also functions as an air guide that leads to the air.

Reference numeral 11 denotes an electrostatic air cleaning unit of about +2.
A large number of aluminum plates connected to a kv DC power supply are arranged in parallel with the blowing direction, and a discharge counter electrode 12 is formed between the discharge counter electrode 12 and a wire or a needle electrode connected to a DC power supply of about -2 kV. The discharge electrode 13 is charged with invisible dust and tobacco smoke in the air by the discharge electrode 13.
And is attached to an upper space between the heat exchanger 8 and the front panel 3.

A mesh-shaped pre-filter 14 made of resin is provided between the suction port 4 and the heat exchanger 8 or between the suction port 4 and the air cleaning unit 11 to catch relatively large dust in the air. On the right side of the outlet 6, there is formed a display portion 15 for displaying the operating state of the air conditioner by a lamp or the like, and an opening 18 provided at the center with a radiation electrode 17 of an ion generator 16 to be described later.

Referring to FIG. 4, a block diagram of the control circuit will be described. Reference numeral 19 denotes a control device such as a microcomputer for operating and stopping the air conditioner and controlling the ion generator 16; Sensor 21, temperature sensor 22,
A humidity sensor 23 and the like are connected to an input side, and an output side is a relay 27 for turning on and off a power supply to the display unit 15, the indoor fan 24, the control unit 25 of the outdoor unit, and the high voltage generation circuit 26 of the ion generation unit 16. And a relay 30 for turning on and off the power supply to the high-pressure unit 29 of the air purifying device 28.

FIG. 5 is a circuit diagram of the ion sensor 21. Reference numeral 31 denotes a flat antenna charged by ions in the air, and the potential of the antenna 31 is integrated by an integration circuit 32 comprising a resistor r1 and a capacitor c1. It is to distinguish between the potential due to static electricity and the potential due to ions. 33 is an FET transistor q1 and resistors r2, r3, r4, r5
Is a bridge circuit consisting of a transistor i, which measures the voltage that has entered the FET transistor q1,
The signal is amplified by an amplifier circuit 34 including c1, a capacitor c2, and resistors r6 and r7, and finally sends a signal to the control unit 19 via a sensor terminal 35. If the amount of ions in the air is less than the set value, increase the amount of ions generated,
If the amount of ions in the air is too large, the amount of generated ions is reduced.

The display unit 15 includes an ion lamp 38 in which a number of diodes are arranged in a bar graph in addition to an operation stop lamp 36 and a timer lamp 37.
The magnitude of the current ion amount measured in step 1 is displayed in an easy-to-understand manner for the user. In this embodiment, the ion lamp 38 has seven horizontally arranged diodes arranged in a straight line.
1 indicates the presence of about 2000 ions / cc in the vicinity.
This indicates the presence of 000 ions / cc.

In the embodiment, the diodes are arranged in a horizontal straight line. However, the diodes may be arranged in a vertical straight line, a circle, or a fan shape depending on the space of the display unit 15 and the easiness of understanding . The ion generator 16 is a high-voltage generator 2 for boosting a commercial power supply of AC 100 V, 50 Hz or 60 Hz to DC of about 8 kV.
6 is connected to the radiating electrode 17 made of a pointed aluminum plate or a needle so that the radiating electrode 17 has a potential of about -8 kv, and the relay 2 provided between a high voltage generating circuit 26 and a power supply.
7, the control device 19 controls the operation of the ion generator 16.

Referring to FIG. 6, the high-voltage generating circuit 26 is a noise filter connected to an AC 100 V power supply, and includes two capacitors C1 and C2 and two resistors R1 and R2.
R2 is provided. 40 is an oscillation circuit having three diodes D1.
D2, D3, a resistor R3, and a capacitor C3 convert the current into a direct current. The thyristor Q1 of the switching circuit 41 and the two resistors R4, R5 convert the current into a pulse wave. The voltage is boosted by the transformer TR, and finally -8 kV of DC is applied to the radiation electrode 17 by the two resistors R6 and R7 and the diode D4.

The oscillation circuit 40 is provided with a variable-capacitance type capacitor C4, and the cycle of the pulse wave can be freely changed by an ion amount adjustment switch (not shown) provided in the operation unit 20. The amount of generated ions can be manually adjusted by changing the period. A noise filter 43 also includes two resistors R8 and R9 and two zener diodes ZD1 and ZD2.

In this embodiment, the width of the pulse wave is 4 μSec.
The width of the pulse wave can be changed by changing the resistance value and the capacitance value of the resistor R3 and the capacitor C3 of the oscillation circuit 40. As shown in FIG. Is smaller than about 1 μSec, the radiation electrode 1
7, the amount of negative ions generated is less than 10,000 per cc, and the effect of negative ions is reduced.
If it is larger than 0 μSec, ozone harmful to the human body is rapidly generated.

The air purifying device 28 converts an AC power of 100 V into a DC of approximately +2 kV and a DC of approximately −2 kV by a high voltage unit 29 and supplies the DC to the air cleaning unit 11. The operation and stop of the control device 19 are performed by the relay 30 provided in the control device 19.

FIG. 7 shows the voltage applied to the radiation electrode 17. In this embodiment, the voltage applied to the radiation electrode 17 is -8 kV.
Pulse wave is continuously applied for about 10 minutes, and negative ions are released into the room by the air blast of the air conditioner.
For one minute, the relay 27 is turned off and the generation of negative ions is stopped. In the one minute of this stop, negative ions floating around the air conditioner and on the surface of the housing are attenuated, so that dust and smoke charged on the product and the Less sticking to surrounding walls, etc.
Thereafter, the operation for 10 minutes and the stop for 1 minute are repeated. FIG. 8 is a detailed diagram showing the pulse waveform of FIG. 7, wherein the pulse wave has a period of 10 to 50 mSec and about 4 μS.
It oscillates with a pulse width of ec, and the amount of generated ions can be freely changed by changing the period.

In operation, the air conditioner starts operating when an operation switch (not shown) of the operation unit 20 is turned on, a compressor (not shown) provided in the outdoor unit rotates, and refrigerant flows into the refrigeration circuit. The heat exchanger 8 is heated at the time of heating and cooled at the time of cooling, and when the fan 9 is started, the indoor air sucked from the suction port 4 is cooled by the heat exchanger 8.
And is blown out from the outlet 6.

Thereafter, when an ion generation switch (not shown) in the operation section 20 is turned on, the relay 27 is turned on, and the ion generator 17 is operated for 10 minutes and the intermittent operation is stopped for 1 minute as described above. Thus, the negative ions floating around the air conditioner and the surface of the housing are attenuated, so that the charged dust and smoke are less likely to adhere to the product and surrounding walls. The resulting -8 kv
As a result, about 10,000 negative ions are generated per 1 cc by a pulse wave having a width of 4 μSec, and the ion lamp 38 of the display unit 15 is turned on to display the current amount of ions to the user in an easy-to-understand manner.

The user changes the capacity of the capacitor C4 with an ion amount adjustment switch provided in the operation unit 20 to adjust the amount of ions per time according to the user's preference by looking at the display. Thereafter, the amount of generation is automatically finely adjusted by the ion sensor 21, so that harmful ozone is hardly generated, and only a certain amount of negative ions having a good effect on the human body can be used. .

Since the inexpensive ion sensor 21 having the flat antenna 31 is attached to the suction port 4, the amount of generated ions can be automatically adjusted inexpensively without increasing the price of the instrument body. In addition, the ion lamp 38 is a bar graph display using light emitting diodes , so that it is very easy to see and understand. Further, in this embodiment, only the example of the air conditioner is shown, but if only the element for heat exchange is removed, the air conditioner can be implemented as it is.

[0025]

As described above, according to the present invention, an inexpensive ion sensor is attached to the suction port , so that the amount of generated ions can be automatically adjusted without increasing the price of the instrument body much. became. In addition, the amount of ions in the intake air is measured by the ion sensor to adjust the amount of ions generated, and the current value is displayed by the bar-shaped ion lamp on the display.
The user can recognize the ion amount in a very easy to understand and understand manner .

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a schematic sectional view of the same.

FIG. 3 is a sectional view of the air cleaning unit.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of the control circuit.

FIG. 5 is a circuit diagram of the ion sensor.

FIG. 6 is a circuit diagram of the high-voltage generation circuit.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory diagram showing a potential of the radiation electrode.

FIG. 8 is a detailed view of FIG. 6 showing a waveform of the pulse.

FIG. 9 is an explanatory diagram showing the relationship between the amount of generation of the negative ions and ozone and the width of a pulse wave.

FIG. 10 is an explanatory diagram showing a relationship between the generation amount of the negative ions and the period of the pulse wave.

[Explanation of symbols]

 Reference Signs List 1 indoor unit 4 suction port 6 outlet 9 fan 15 display unit 17 radiation electrode 21 ion sensor 26 high voltage generation circuit 31 antenna 32 integration circuit 33 bridge circuit 34 amplification circuit

──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continuation of the front page (56) References JP-A-4-90428 (JP, A) JP-A-51-113692 (JP, A) JP-A-6-194340 (JP, A) JP-A-9-99 119657 (JP, A) JP-A-10-197482 (JP, A) (58) Fields investigated (Int. Cl. ⁷ , DB name) F24F 1/00 B03C 3/02 F28F 7/00 G01N 27/60

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] 1. A high-voltage generating circuit and a blower fan are provided in a housing, a radiating electrode for generating ions is provided in a blower path from a suction port to a blowout port or near a blower path, and an ion sensor is provided in the suction port. In the control of the ion generator based on the amount of ions detected by the sensor, the ion sensor includes an antenna, an integrating circuit, a bridge circuit, and an amplifier circuit, and a display unit is provided on the surface of the housing.
Displays the amount of ions in a graph based on the signal from the sensor
Air conditioner or air purifier and said was it.