JPH01224893A - Ozone generator for in-machine sterilization of drink vending machine - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To make unnecessary a troublesome control system such as the output control of an ozonizer and to decrease a cost by operating a blast fan at the time of the sterilizing processing of an in-machine air, discharging low concentration ozone into the in-machine space, stopping the blast fan at the time of the sterilizing processing of the water for drink and injecting the high concentration ozone into a water circuit for drink as it is. CONSTITUTION:A blast fan 5 is operated while an ozonizer 2 is a constant output, and thus, ozone generated by the ozonizer 2 is forcibly diluted by a large quantity of air with a fan blast in a housing 1, becomes a low concentration ozone and discharged from a low concentration ozone outlet port 3 toward the in-machine space. For this, the blast fan 5 is stopped, in this condition, an ozone injector 26 such as an ejector provided at a water circuit side for drink is operated, the ozone generated by the ozonizer 2 are hardly diluted at an ambient air, fetched into a wind channel 6 from an ozonizer peripheral are through a high concentration ozone output port 4 while the high concentration is kept, and injected from the high concentration ozone outlet port 4 through the ozone injector 26 into the water of the water circuit for drink. Thus, the corresponding can be executed with easy constitution.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention provides an ozone generator that is installed in a cup-type beverage vending machine and sterilizes the internal air in the cabinet space and drinking water with ozone. Regarding.

[Conventional technology]

The cup-type beverage vending machine mentioned above injected ozone into the drinking water circuit system to sterilize the drinking water stored in the water reservoir was developed in 1986-301.
82 etc. is publicly known.

In other words, a vending machine is equipped with an ozone generator, and the ozone generated here is injected into the water flowing through the drinking water circuit through an ozone injector such as an aeration diffuser or ejector, and the ozone is injected into the water flowing through the drinking water circuit. This is a sterilization treatment by dissolving ozone. This makes it possible to maintain the quality of the drinking water stored in the in-flight water reservoir.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

By the way, in vending machines such as the above-mentioned cup-type beverage vending machines that mix and sell beverages on-board, there is a tendency for in-flight hygiene management to be increasingly strengthened from the perspective of food hygiene. Looking at the interior configuration of a cup-type beverage vending machine from this point of view, in addition to the water circuit for the drinking water system described above, the inside of the machine includes a water storage section for an ice maker, various powder raw material boxes, a delivery chute connected to these, and raw materials. A large number of various parts, such as an agitator, are built into the machine, and these parts must be kept in a highly hygienic condition at all times. Therefore, as a means of maintaining and managing the hygiene of the cabin space, ozone is released into the cabin space, similar to the ozone sterilization treatment of drinking water, to ozone the cabin air and the beverage and water passages of the various parts that come into contact with the cabin air. A method for killing moss has been proposed and its development is progressing.

By the way, when we consider the ozone sterilization of drinking water and the ozone sterilization of cabin air, we find that highly concentrated ozone is required to effectively sterilize drinking water, whereas cabin air requires low concentrations of ozone. It is desirable to perform sterilization treatment, in other words, if high-concentration ozone is released directly into the cabin space,
This is because ozone deteriorates the organic materials such as rubber that make up the various devices built into the aircraft, and other problems may occur, such as ozone leaking out of the aircraft from the cabinet and spreading a pungent odor around it. be. In addition, to sterilize drinking water, ozone is injected into the water, while to sterilize cabin air, ozone is discharged into the cabin space.
The form of ozone supply differs depending on the purpose of sterilization treatment.

For this reason, development has been progressing in the past in the direction of installing separate ozone generators to generate high-concentration ozone for sterilizing drinking water and ozone generators to generate low-concentration ozone for sterilizing cabin air. However, installing two ozone generators onboard the aircraft is costly, so another method is to use one ozone generator that can variably control the ozone generation capacity, that is, the output.
We also tried a method that adopted a single ozone generator and switched the ozone generation capacity and ozone supply path for water sterilization and air sterilization, but this required a switching control system in addition to the ozone generator. Therefore, sufficient results were not achieved in reducing costs.

This invention was made in consideration of the above points, and its main purpose is to produce high-concentration ozone for water sterilization and air sterilization using one ozonizer while operating at a constant output, without incurring almost any increase in cost. An object of the present invention is to provide an ozone generator for sterilizing a beverage vending machine, which has a simple configuration and can selectively supply low-concentration ozone.

[Means to solve the problem]

In order to solve the above ll A high-concentration ozone discharge port connected to the housing is opened, and a blower fan is installed on the air suction side of the housing. When the cabin air is sterilized, a blower fan is operated to dilute the ozone generated by the ozonizer with a large amount of air, and the low-concentration ozone obtained is discharged from the low-concentration ozone discharge port into the cabin space. At the same time, the blower fan is stopped during sterilization of drinking water, and the high concentration ozone generated by the ozonizer is directly injected into the drinking water circuit system from the high concentration ozone discharge port via the ozone injector. It shall be.

(Function) In the above configuration, by operating the blower fan with the ozonizer at a constant output, the ozone generated by the ozonizer is forcibly diluted in the housing with a large amount of air blown by the fan, and becomes low concentration ozone. The low-concentration ozone discharge port that opens in front of the ozone is discharged into the cabin space.In response to this, the blower fan is stopped, and in this state, an ozone injector such as an ejector installed on the drinking water circuit side is operated. As a result, the ozone generated by the ozonizer is hardly diluted by the surrounding air, and is taken into the wind barrel leading to the high-concentration ozone discharge port from the area around the ozonizer while maintaining a high concentration. The ozone is then injected into the water in the potable water circuit via an ozone injector.

In other words, while keeping the output of the ozonizer constant, a single ozone generator can selectively supply high-concentration ozone used to sterilize drinking water and low-concentration ozone used to sterilize cabin air. Moreover, the ozone concentration can be changed by simply controlling the blower fan to start and stop, and there is no need to control the output of the ozonizer, so it can be handled with a simple configuration.

(Example) Fig. 1 is a cross-sectional view of the configuration of an ozone generator according to an embodiment of the present invention, Fig. 2 is an internal system diagram of a cup-type beverage vending machine incorporating the ozone generator of Fig. 1, and Fig. 3 is This is an operation time chart of an ozone generator compatible with water sterilization and air sterilization.

First, the structure of the ozone generator will be explained using Figure 1.
In the figure, reference numeral 1 denotes a semi-sealed housing with an ozonizer 2 built therein, and a low-concentration ozone discharge port 3 and a high-concentration ozone discharge port 4 are separately opened at the front of the housing 1. , and a blower fan 5 is installed on the suction side at the rear of the housing. Furthermore, a wind cylinder 6 is piped inside the housing in series with the high-concentration ozone discharge port 4 described above, and the suction port 6a of the wind cylinder 6 is opened close to the ozonizer 2 so as to cover it. Here, the suction port 6 of the wind cylinder 6
A slight gap g is set between the end face of a and the base 1a of the nozzle 1 on which the ozonizer 2 is installed.

With this configuration, if a voltage is applied to the electrodes of the ozonizer 2 to activate it, and the blower fan 5 is operated in this state, air will flow inside the housing 1 as shown by the solid line arrow,
The ozone generated by the ozonizer 2 with a part of it as raw material air is diluted with a large amount of other air that circulates inside the housing, and the low-concentration ozone is discharged from the housing to the outside through the low-concentration ozone discharge port 3. On the other hand, if the ozonizer 2 is operated with the blower fan 5 stopped, and a suction force is applied to the wind cylinder 6 by an ejector, pump, etc. (not shown) externally connected to the high-concentration ozone discharge port 4, the ozonizer The ozone generated in step 2 is taken into the wind barrel 6 from the surrounding area of the ozonizer as shown by the dotted arrow, and is discharged from there to the outside through the high-concentration ozone discharge port 4. Moreover, in this case, if the suction force of the ejector etc. described above is set to match the ozone generation capacity of the ozonizer, the suction port 6a of the wind cylinder 6 opens close to the ozonizer 2 as described above. 1. The ozone generated by the ozonizer is hardly diluted by the surrounding air and is taken into the wind barrel 6 while maintaining a high concentration and discharged to the outside. In other words, ozonizer 2
If the blower fan 5 is operated while keeping the output constant, low-concentration ozone will be obtained through the low-concentration ozone outlet 3, and if the blower fan 5 is stopped, high-concentration ozone will be obtained through the high-concentration ozone outlet 4. You will get it.

On the other hand, the above-mentioned ozone generator is installed inside a cup-type beverage vending machine as shown in FIG. In FIG. 2, the ozone generator described in FIG. 1 is indicated by the reference numeral 7. To explain FIG. Of the two water distribution pipes 11 and 12 drawn out from the water reservoir 9, one water pipe 11 is connected to the ice maker 13 to supply water for ice making, and the other water pipe 12
is the water pump 14. Water filter 15. Three-way switching valve 16.
It passes through the water cooling coil 17 and reaches the three-way switching valve 18, which further branches into two parts, one of which is a bend stage 19.
The other end is connected to a water nozzle 20 opening upwardly, and the other end is connected to a carbonated water nozzle 22 via a carbonator 21 .

In addition, 23 is a syrup tank, 24 is a syrup nozzle, 2
5 is a cup carried out to the bending stage 19.

Further, a return pipe 25 is piped between the three-way switching valve 16 in the water distribution pipe 12 and the water reservoir 9, and an ejector as an ozone injector is installed in the middle of the return pipe 25. 26 is interposed. The beverage vending operation of the beverage vending machine having such a configuration is well known, and a description thereof will be omitted.

Here, the ozone generator 7 described in FIG. 1 has its high concentration ozone discharge port 4 connected to the injection boat of the ejector 26 in FIG. The ice shaker 13a of the ice maker 13, which is open to the inside, is connected to the middle of the ice shaker 13a through a pipe 28.

Next, the processing operations for ozone sterilization of drinking water and ozone sterilization of in-flight air using the above configuration will be explained. The operation time chart of the ozone generator 7 in each sterilization process is shown in FIG. 3. In other words, in the sterilization process of drinking water stored in the water reservoir 9 in FIG. The ozonizer 2 is operated while the blower fan 5 is stopped, and the ozonizer 2 is operated while the blower fan 5 is operated in the process of sterilizing the air inside the machine. Further, the operation time chart shown in FIG. 3 is set in the controller of the vending machine, and the water sterilization process and the air sterilization process are executed at appropriate time intervals by timer control or the like.

By the way, in the drinking water sterilization process shown in the time chart of FIG. 3, the three-way switching valve 16 on the drinking water circuit side in FIG.
Start 4. As a result, the water stored in the water reservoir 9 is transferred to the water pump 14 of the water distribution pipe 12. water filter 15
．． Three-way switching valve 16. The W1 water is then fed back to the water reservoir 9 again through the return pipe 25, and during this circulating water feeding process, negative pressure is generated in the injection boat of the ejector 26, and this negative pressure is used to generate high-concentration ozone in the ozone generator 7. It acts as an ozone suction force on the discharge port 4 side. As a result, as explained in FIG.
is injected into the flowing potable water stream and dissolved in the water;
Sterilize drinking water.

On the other hand, in the process of sterilizing the cabin air, the blower fan 5 of the ozone generator 7 is operated as shown in the time chart of FIG. As a result, low-concentration ozonized air diluted with a large amount of air is discharged from the low-concentration ozone discharge port 3 through the pipe 28 into the ice chute 13a of the ice maker 13, and from there is discharged and diffused into the internal space of the cabinet 8. . In this case, the ejector 26 externally connected to the high-concentration ozone discharge port 4 is in an inoperative state, so no suction force is applied to the air g46, and ozone does not flow out to the drinking water circuit side. As a result, the air inside the machine and the beverage passageways exposed to the air, such as the raw material stirrer, are sterilized with low-concentration ozone.

In the embodiment shown in FIG. 2, low concentration ozone is discharged into the ice shake of the ice maker, but it may be discharged directly into the internal space of the cabinet 8 without going through the ice chute.

〔Effect of the invention〕

Since the present invention is configured as described above, one ozone generator with a built-in constant output ozonizer can
It is possible to selectively supply high-concentration ozone used to sterilize drinking water in beverage vending machines and constant-concentration ozone used to sterilize cabin air. Moreover, the ozone concentration can be changed by simply controlling the operation and stopping of the blower fan, and there is no need for any complicated control systems such as ozonizer output control, resulting in a significant cost reduction compared to conventional systems.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a cross-sectional view of the structure of an ozone generator according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is an internal system diagram of a cup-type beverage vending machine incorporating the ozone generator of FIG. 1, and FIG. and an operation time chart of an ozone generator corresponding to the process of sterilizing cabin air. In each figure, 1: housing, 2: ozonizer, 3: low concentration ozone outlet, 4: high concentration ozone outlet, 5: ventilation fan, 6:
Wind cylinder, 6a: Wind cylinder, suction port, 7: Ozone generator, 8
: Vending machine cabinet, 26: Ejector as an ozone injector. Figure 2

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1) An ozone generator that sterilizes air and drinking water by supplying ozone to the inside space of a beverage vending machine and the drinking water circuit system, and the inside space is located on the outlet side of the housing containing the ozonizer. A low-concentration ozone discharge port that opens to the side and a high-concentration ozone discharge port that is connected to the ozone injector installed on the drinking water circuit side are opened, and a blower fan is installed on the air intake side of the housing.
The suction port of a wind cylinder connected to the high-concentration ozone discharge port and piped inside the housing is opened facing the ozonizer, and when the cabin air is sterilized, a blower fan is operated to remove a large amount of ozone generated by the ozonizer. The low-concentration ozone obtained by diluting with air is discharged into the cabin space from the low-concentration ozone discharge port, and when drinking water is being sterilized, the blower fan is stopped, and the high-concentration ozone generated by the ozonizer is directly discharged into the cabin space. An ozone generator for sterilizing the inside of a beverage vending machine, characterized in that concentrated ozone is injected from a discharge port into a drinking water circuit system through an ozone injector.