US20130305773A1

US20130305773A1 - Fluid driven chiller system

Info

Publication number: US20130305773A1
Application number: US13/476,240
Authority: US
Inventors: Ronald Chaccour
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 2012-05-21
Filing date: 2012-05-21
Publication date: 2013-11-21

Abstract

This chiller unit can be used for ice cream machineries, building machinery in hot weather, air conditioning units, military vehicles (tanks), medical devices that need fluid cooling units (especially the ammoniac freezer ones) and almost every industrial machine that uses water or fluid cooling systems.

Description

DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

This invention is a chiller unit that uses a normal ice cream freezer that has glass or plastic cover which is removed and instead of it a topping consisting of a plastic unit holding a car radiator with 2 top fans (FIG. 3) is placed on top of freezer.
A horizontal sliding door closes the top of the freezer when it's not used to keep the cold inside it. To use the chiller the horizontal opening is pulled outside and thus opening the basin to the radiator (FIG. 5). When the chiller is turned off, the sliding door is pushed inward again and so closing the basin to conserve the chill inside again (FIG. 3).
The direction of the fans is made in a way to suck the air from inside the basin to the outside (FIG. 12). 2 plastic pipes fixed on the fans drive the hot air coming from the radiator by the fans, upward away from the machine (FIG. 17).
The basin of the freezer is filled with an 8 shaped plastic tank containing fluid that is turned to ice by overnight freezing.
On the outer body of the freezer one or several plastic water tanks hang on the sides of the freezer (FIG. 12). If many tanks are used they are interconnected. The tanks are connected to the entry of the radiator by the means of a water circulation pump. The exit of the radiator is connected to the machinery to cool down and another pipe connects the exit of the machine back to the other end of the water tank (FIG. 14).
The water from the tank is sucked by the circulation pump passes through the radiator and reaches the machinery to cool and comes back to the tank by the exit of the machinery. The fans of the radiator that stand on top of the freezer, suck the cold energy of the freezer basin and the 8 shaped tank and give it to the circulating fluid coming from the tank (FIG. 14) and the fluid enters the hot machinery with cold energy giving to it by the fans of the radiator. So the fluid stocked in the tank surrounding the size of the freezer gets the chilling energy stocked in the freezer basin and the 8 shaped tank sitting in the basin by the mean of the radiator, pass it to the hot parts of the machinery we need to cool, and then the fluid comes back to the tank (or tanks) surrounding the freezer outer sides to pass it again in the closed loop cycle formed by the tank, radiator, and machinery again (FIG. 13).
So the closed cycle the fluid travels through is formed by the following: outside tank, radiator, hot parts of the machinery and back to the tank again.
When used for a long time water is made by condensation in the freezer basin. In order to gather it (excess water) a small angle like funnel is placed in the bottom of the basin (FIG. 7,8). The exit of the funnel is connected to the small opening in the bottom that almost every freezer has, and a recipient is placed under it to catch the excess fluid coming from the basin. 4 stands are made at each corner of the funnel to let the 8 shaped tank stand on it (FIG. 11).
For longer chilling capability a second 8 shaped tank can be provided with the chiller and this tank is placed in another freezer and can be used to replace the used ones in the chiller (FIG. 16).

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

This chiller unit transfers the chilling power of a freezer stocked in its basin and given to an 8 shaped tank sitting in it to a machinery that needs to be cooled down. The energy stocked in the freezer is measured by the amount of time the freezer run before it is used.
The goal of the invention is to use chilling power stocked slowly by time in a freezer in a relatively short amount of time with inexpensive material and powerful medium (the car radiators and fans) in fact the effect on the fluid circulating in the radiator of the air sucked from the freezer basin by the fans is immediate. The cold air strikes the cores of the radiator and cools the liquid in it in a very fast way.

The Economic Strength of the Invention

On average a freezer costs $150-300 depending on the brand and power. A new car radiator with electric ventilation fans cost around $200.
The tanks used inside the basin and outside the freezer cost also around $100.
The AC/DC converter for the fan is about $30 and plus circulation pump $200. Some piping connection around $20.
These prices are market prices not industrial ones, for large quantities the amounts will go much further down.
The advantage of this chiller is that large and small manufacturing companies can adopt it since it's very simple in design and manufacturing since we're only assembling products available on every market anywhere in the world.
The same design of this chiller unit can be used for building much bigger units.
The sequence of the drawings is in assembly steps.

DESCRIPTION OF FIGURES

FIG. 1 shows the freezers that can be used
FIG. 2 shows a radiator
FIG. 3 shows the cover of the freezer
FIG. 4 shows the side view of the fiber cover
FIG. 5 shows the sliding door opened
FIG. 6 shows the fiber cover fixed on top of freezer
FIG. 7 shows a funnel
FIG. 8 shows a side view of the funnel
FIG. 9 shows the 8 shaped tank
FIG. 10 shows how to place the 8 shaped tank in the freezer
FIG. 11 shows a standby 8 shaped tank
FIG. 12 shows the water tank
FIG. 13 shows some steps to final phase
FIG. 14 shows how fluid is circulating through running system
FIG. 15 shows the use of ammoniac freezer
FIG. 16 shows standby 8 shaped tank in another freezer
FIG. 17 shows the chiller design

Claims

1. The importance of this chiller unit is it's economic investing benefits.

2. It's cheap to manufacture and assemble, heavy duty, easy to handle, with a good fast chilling capability, and low energy consumption, and can be assembled anywhere in the world.

3. 1^stpart of claim 2: this chiller unit uses an ordinary ice cream freezer (commercial ice cream freezer or chest freezer are the ones that we use in our chiller) (FIG. 1) or ammoniac freezer, a car radiator with fans (FIG. 2), a water circulation pump (FIG. 2 a), and some plastic made parts and tanks (FIG. 9, 13) (cheap material used for many years).

4. All the material in claim 3 is usually heavy-duty cheap parts.

5. 2^ndpart of claim 2: heavy-duty ice cream freezers stay outside in the sun for a good period of time. Car vehicle radiators withstand long periods of heavy heat during summer time in vehicles (mainly we'll use truck radiators).

Water pumps are designed to last for years and serve for long running hours during a single day under any weather, good plastic material last for years.

6. 3^rdpart of claim 2: 1—easy to fix, 2—easy to move (all commercial ice cream freezers have wheels and thus making the device move with good mobility), 3—easy to operate. Every part of the chiller unit can be fixed easily since people with good experience can fix freezers, car radiators or water pumps within hours. So the system is technician friendly. This system doesn't need any electronic board equipment it's run by simple electrical current and switches mainly on/off ones.

7. The 4^thpart of claim 2: this device has a powerful chilling capability since it uses the energy stocked by time in the cold components of the device (freezer unit) to be spent quickly on machines which require strong cooling power in order to make the heating parts of it's machineries cool down (ex. Ice cream machines). In fact, the freezer accumulates the slow but steady cooling energy of the current that makes it run in cooling mode inside its basin and inside a tank that has a shape like an 8 sitting in the freezer basin. (FIG. 11) Using an ammoniac freezer (freezer that uses heat in order to let ammoniac give cooling energy) the heat generated by the machinery we're cooling down with this chiller, can be used to help the ammoniac freezer give stronger cooling energy (the transfer of heat can be made by coiling system wrapped upon the hot parts of the machinery and connected to the heating part of the ammoniac freezer). (FIG. 15) Ammoniac freezers are low consumption units, can be operated on solar heating panels which make them very helpful in hot areas of the world and thus our chiller based on ammoniac freezers are very efficient in such areas.

8. The 5^thpart of claim 2: the fans of the car radiator work on 12V dc power outlet. An ordinary ice cream freezer uses at average 3 A on 220V current. Ammoniac freezer uses less power usually and as proven in claim 7, any source of heat can be easily transformed to help them be energy consumption effective. So the total energy consume by the chiller is low and normal AC current.

9. The 8 shaped tank sitting in the freezer basin (FIG. 11) are filled with water (or liquid) and left for a night in a freezer or the freezer of the chiller to turn the liquid in them into ice before using them in the chiller. The 8 form of tank is very low energy consumption effective that is the frozen liquid in the tanks will give its stocked freezing energy to the radiators in a more lasting effective way (proven by tests).

10. 6^thpart of claim 2: anywhere in the world almost anywhere there are freezers, car radiators, and water tanks so the production can be made in almost every country depending on the local market products without the need to import product.