WO2012146767A1

WO2012146767A1 - Compact system for storing and draining black wastewater for a vehicle provided with cassette toilets

Info

Publication number: WO2012146767A1
Application number: PCT/EP2012/057869
Authority: WO
Inventors: Jean-François KRIER
Original assignee: U-Klean
Priority date: 2011-04-29
Filing date: 2012-04-27
Publication date: 2012-11-01
Also published as: FR2974551A1; FR2974551B1

Abstract

The present invention relates to a compact system for storing and draining black wastewater for a movable vehicle, said compact system including a movable storage cassette (400) to be extracted from a recess of said vehicle, said cassette (400) being provided with an opening (402) for manually draining said cassette (400), characterized in that the opening (402) of the cassette (400) is fitted to a pump (408) for automatically draining black wastewater from said cassette (400).

Description

Compact system for storing and evacuating black water from a vehicle equipped with cassette toilets.

The present invention relates to a compact system for storing and evacuating black water from a vehicle, of the motorhome or caravan type, such a system being commonly referred to as a cassette toilet.

1 / Prior art:

It is designed for mobile vehicles, such as motorhomes, mobile units for construction sites or motorhomes, with a compact system for the recovery of waste from toilets equipping said vehicles. this waste being referred to as black water.

Referring to Figure 1 is thus shown a compact toilet system 100 for motorhome, the toilet 100 being provided with a bowl 1 02 connected to a cassette 104 storing the black water from the bowl 102.

The filling of the cassette 104 is effected until a user of the system 100 detects, by means of a level indicator or an indicator, the need to empty said cassette 104 following its complete filling.

Referring to Figures 2 and 3, the emptying of the cassette 104 is then carried out in two steps:

A first step 200 (FIG. 2) for extracting the cassette 104 from a dedicated housing 106 in the camper, and

A second step 300 (FIG. 3) of transport 302, manual emptying 304 and rinsing of the cassette 1 04. For this purpose, it should be noted that the cassette 104 is provided with a bend 108 that can pivot on it. even to perform a spout function of said cassette 104, this handling that does not protect the user from splashing black water.

11 / Problems of the prior art:

The use of a compact system 100 for storing and discharging black water as previously described has many disadvantages:

On the one hand, it requires a significant effort on the part of the user who must handle (pulling from his housing, move and lift to drain and rinse via a pivoting elbow) a significant weight, typically greater than 20 kg given that the usual volume of this type of cassette is of the order of 20 liters.

For this purpose, it should be noted that, to relieve a user in these efforts, it has recently been proposed to provide a caster cassette and a handle (as shown in Figure 3), which facilitates relatively the transport of The tape.

Moreover, in order to allow its handling by a single user, the cassette can not have excessive dimensions / weight, resulting in a limited storage volume and, consequently, a high emptying frequency or, in particular other words, a reduced autonomy between two oil changes.

This autonomy is also reduced by the need, in a motorhome, to limit the volume required by each piece of equipment in order to offer a maximum mod ularity in terms of the layout of the possible interior equipments. In fact, each motorhome is manufactured by an integrator equipping a motorized mobile base provided by a vehicle manufacturer with a plurality of separate equipment, proposed by manufacturers specific to each equipment.

Thus, as illustrated in FIG. 1, the toilets form such equipment, proposed ready for assembly by a specialist manufacturer, in the form of a block such that, typically, the dimensions of the cassette have a width of the order of 230 to 280 mm. Such reduced dimensions are also justified by the mobile nature of the vehicle carrying the cassette whose liquid content presents a risk of imbalance of the vehicle during the movements of the latter on the road.

Finally, it should be noted that the housing of the cassette is a narrow and constraining space vis-à-vis the cassette, i u i particularly allows to avoid its projection in case of violent impact.

111 / Description of the invention

The present invention aims to solve at least one of the problems of the prior art mentioned above. It results from the observation that, notwithstanding the use of a cassette tape in particularly narrow compartments, it is possible to provide the known compact systems equipped with a mobile cassette for storing and discharging water. black, automatic means of evacuation of black water by replacing the elbow intended to serve as spout in case of manual use.

The present invention also results from the observation that, in this case, these automatic means must be removably fixed so as to allow manual emptying of the cassette, particularly in the event of malfunction of the automatic means, which operation is still possible using pre-existing cassettes or having an equivalent volume.

Therefore, the present invention relates to a compact system for storing and discharging black water for a mobile vehicle, this compact system comprising a mobile storage cassette intended to be extracted from a housing of said vehicle, this cassette being provided with an opening for manually emptying said cassette, characterized in that the opening of the cassette is arranged to a pump for performing an automatic drain black water of said cassette.

Thanks to the invention, a compact system for storing and evacuating black water from a camper is particularly effective. Fact: Firstly, the heavy and tiring handling of the cassette is replaced by an automatic drain requiring only a simple connection of the compact system to an evacuation to an external storage / treatment container, typically via a lightweight hollow plastic tube.

In other words, a compact system according to the invention no longer requires the displacement of the mobile cassette, which nevertheless remains mobile so as, on the one hand, to reduce the installation cost of the compact system according to the invention - in particular by using already existing systems and, secondly, to allow a possible manual evacuation of black water in the case where the pump could not perform its function of evacuation thereof.

Thus, such an automatic mode for emptying the black water makes it possible to avoid the forces and splashes that are suitable for manual emptying as previously described and has a faster emptying and rinsing rate than a manual process according to the prior art.

As described later in detail, the invention notably allows the following operations (in whole or in part):

- black water drain

- A gray water drain allowing a washing / rinsing of the cassette and the pump,

a rinsing with clean water of the whole,

the system can be remotely controlled by a single operator.

- Secondly, a compact system according to the invention can be adapted to a compact existing toilet system by replacing the elbow used to manually empty the cassette by a pump and a suitable terminal block for this purpose. Thus, vehicles currently in service can nevertheless be equipped with a compact system according to the invention for a reasonable cost, the operation of replacing the elbow by the pump and the terminal block adapted being relatively simple.

Thirdly, a compact system according to the invention can fail without seriously compromising the comfort of its users since the pump and the terminal block can be easily replaced by a bend according to the prior art. In other words, an automatic system according to the invention does not eliminate the possibility of manual emptying, which is particularly important on board vehicles intended to travel, sometimes in places with no repairers.

It should be noted that, in most embodiments, the pump is held in the cassette compartment which protects the pump from theft and weather (especially gel) while providing easy access to it for maintenance and by freeing the builders from the need to plan a specific redevelopment for system integration.

In one embodiment, the system is characterized in that the pump is removably arranged in the cassette.

In one embodiment, the pump is arranged in the cassette via a terminal block which comprises at least one rinsing water inlet of the cassette.

In one embodiment, the at least one input is connected to the pump.

According to one embodiment, the at least one rinsing water inlet is in the vicinity of an outlet of the black water in the terminal block so that part of this rinsing water is sucked by the pump directly after admission. in the terminal block.

In one embodiment, the terminal block has a second rinse water inlet. In one embodiment, at least one of the rinsing water inlets is intended for a gray water with soapy liquids.

In one embodiment, the pump is arranged at the junction block by means of a fastener for orienting an outlet of the pumped black water.

According to one embodiment, said attachment is formed by a conical connection of the pump on the terminal block.

The invention also relates to a block provided with a pump for a compact system for storing and evacuating black water for a mobile vehicle, of the camper or caravan type, this compact system comprising a cassette (400) for mobile storage intended to be extracted from a housing of said vehicle, this cassette (400) being provided with a opening (402) for manually emptying said cassette (400), characterized in that said block (410) of the cassette (400) is arranged at a pump (408) so as to perform an automatic draining of the black water in said cassette ( 400).

The invention also relates to a vehicle implementing a mobile storage cassette toilet system intended to be extracted from a housing of said vehicle equipped with a system as described above. Other advantages of the invention will appear on reading the description of an embodiment carried out below for descriptive and non-limiting purposes with reference to the attached figures in which:

FIG. 1, already described, represents a compact toilet system according to the prior art,

FIGS. 2 and 3, already described, show the method of emptying the toilets in accordance with the prior art,

FIG. 4 represents a cassette for a compact system according to the invention,

FIG. 5 represents an electric grinder pump intended for the implementation of the invention and,

FIG. 6 represents a pump / cassette junction block according to the invention,

FIGS. 7, 8, 13 and 14 represent various elements of a variant of the invention such that the mill of a pump is housed in the terminal block, and

- Figures 9, 10, 1 1 and 12 show different elements of a variant of the invention such that the pump can be offset with respect to the terminal block. Referring to Figure 4 is shown a 400 storage cassette for a compact system for storing and discharging black water of a mobile vehicle for temporary use of the type of motorhome or caravan.

According to the invention, this cassette 400 is provided with an opening 402 allowing its manual emptying, said cassette 400 being also movable to be extracted from its housing - not shown - similarly to a cassette according to the prior art. In fact, this cassette 400 may be a cassette 1 04 according to the prior art so that the invention may in particular be implemented on an existing vehicle.

However, and in accordance with the invention, the cassette 400 is arranged in a pump 408 making it possible to automatically empty the black water of said cassette, this pump having to have a grinding function in addition - the black liquors comprising suspended matter.

In this embodiment, the pump also controls a filling of said cassette with a rinsing fluid. For this purpose, it should be noted that such a rinsing fluid can be formed by air, clean water and / or greywater, that is to say, water from the shower and / or a dish sink.

In the latter case, it should be noted that the use of greywater rinses the cassette 400 with a highly concentrated liquid soapy - dishwashing product and / or shower soap. Therefore, the rinsing of the cassette 400 with the greywater generates a particularly efficient rinsing of the cassette reservoir, since the greyish soapy material performs an intensive cleaning function.

In addition, the greywater is recycled or, in other words, a saving of rinse water from the cassette is performed.

In this variant of the invention, the pump 408 is arranged in the cassette 400 so that it can be extracted from said vehicle without being In other words, the pump 408 forms a unitary assembly with the cassette 400, which facilitates in particular its maintenance and its accommodation in a camper.

In other variants not shown, the pump 408 must be disaggregated from the cassette to allow the extraction of the latter.

To perform this maintenance, the pump 408 can be arranged at a block 410 partially fulfilling the function of the elbow according to the prior art guiding the black water of the cassette 400 to an outlet 412 of the compact system.

In this embodiment, an annular flexible sleeve 41 1 makes it possible to prolong the suction from the joining block 410, to which it is arranged, towards the inside of the cassette 400.

In FIG. 4, an elbow 413 according to the prior art is also shown because it can temporarily replace the block 410 in order to carry out manual emptying, especially in the event of a malfunction of the pump 408.

In this preferred embodiment of the invention, this arrangement is effected by means of a screwing between the pump 408 and the junction block 410 and an interlocking between the junction block 41 and the cassette 400.

Referring to Figure 5, a pump 408 for a system according to the invention is shown in section. Remarkably, such a pump 408 has a conic block 500 provided with a crusher element 502 located near the block 410.

In fact, it has proved necessary to shorten the usually cylindrical block of such a grinding pump 408 so that the pump can be housed in the cramped volume of its housing 807 (FIG. 8) dedicated in a vehicle 809, of significant dimensions. pump (especially relating to the size) being imposed by the power required to perform the function of suction and grinding black water.

In fact, in a variant shown in FIG. 7, a space saving is obtained by housing the grinding element of a pump 708 in the joining block 71 so that this grinding element is incorporated in said block 710 of junction. The connection between the junction block 410 (FIG. 4) and the cassette 400 is preferably of a reversible nature, for example by locking, clipping or screwing. Thus, as already indicated, it is possible to replace the pumping assembly (pump 408, terminal block 410, sleeve 41 1) by an elbow 413 allowing, in case of failure of the latter, to perform the operation of draining manually according to the prior art.

With reference to FIGS. 6 part A and B, the junction block 41 can comprise two inlet inlets 600 and 602 in rinsing water so that, by generating a suction depression of the black water in the cassette 400, the pump 408 generates the admission of these rinsing waters, which can be gray and / or clean, in the cassette 400.

Remarkably, the inlet 600 is located in the vicinity of the outlet 604 of the block 410 serving as a connection with the pump 408. This inlet 600 in rinsing water, upstream of the pump, then allows a portion of this water sucked by it so that the pump does not run dry especially when the tank of the cassette 400 is completely drained.

Depending on the variants of the invention, the rinsing water may be a clean water - that is to say a water that is suitable for consumption - or gray water as previously defined and / or the block 410 may have or more inputs 608 on its upper part.

It should also be noted that the filling of the tank of the cassette 400 is effected by the depression generated by the pump 408 so that, from a single pump, the emptying and filling of the cassette 400 are carried out simultaneously .

In order to facilitate the filling operation, the block 410 has an internal wall 606 making it possible to separate the flow of the outgoing black water from the flow of the flushing fluid entering through the inlet 602.

The present invention is capable of many variants. Typically, it should be noted that the cassette 400 is provided with an opening allowing the interior of the surrounding pressure cassette to be put in place, this pressurization being necessary when a vehicle equipped with a cassette 400 performs trips with steep slopes causing, for example, an overpressure inside the cassette vis-à-vis the surrounding pressure.

Therefore, the emptying can be carried out according to two modes:

- A first mode where the venting is neutralized so that the emptying of the cassette generates a vacuum, for example temporarily by means of a valve,

- A second mode where the venting remains and the inside of the cassette remains at ambient pressure during emptying.

In the state of the art, the regulation of the surrounding pressure is automatic and ensures, as in the context of the invention, the sealing of the cassette to limit odors problems.

According to another variant of the invention, the block 410 has an opening 608 making it possible to access the drain line (s) and / or the rinsing water, which facilitates the maintenance and allows a possible cleaning of said ducts.

Furthermore, the pump can be arranged in the block by means of a fastener to guide the outlet 412 of black water, which can be particularly useful when these waters are transmitted to a fixed docking station that may require orientation guide data or to allow the insertion of the compact system in the dedicated housing.

Depending on the variants, the vehicle equipped with cassette toilet according to the invention is a več terrestrial icon of the motorhome, caravan or trailer type.

According to the embodiments, the grinding pump described above is replaced or combined with any other grinding and / or suction device for emptying the cassette.

Depending on the variants, the control of the pump or, more generally, pumping and / or rinsing means such as a solenoid valve, is performed from a remote control (remote control) that can be located, for example and without limitation, in the cabin, in a portable element such as a telephone or a dedicated housing for emptying operations by a single operator. . In a variant, the pump is arranged at the terminal block via a flexible hose for displacing the pump inside or outside the cassette compartment.

With reference to FIGS. 9 and 10, the pump 908 can thus be displaced inside or outside the housing 907 of the cassette 904 by means of a pipe 91. Thus, the volume of the housing 907 can be particularly It has been reduced to the point that it can not accommodate the pump 908 with the cassette 904 without this constraint limiting the use of the invention.

In the embodiment shown in Figures 9 and 1 0, the door 91 1 of the housing 907 is specially adapted to receive the pump 908.

Moreover, as shown in FIGS. 1 1 and 12, the junction block 910 then has particularly small dimensions, especially in height - on the order of 30 to 50 mm -, while offering an inlet 930 of greywater , an inlet 932 of clean water and an outlet 934 of black water.

According to one variant, a supplementary tank is connected to the cassette so that:

- At first, the pump arranged in the cassette makes a transfer of black water from the mobile cassette to said tank, which increases the autonomy of the toilet, and

- In a second step, the pump empties the cassette and the backup tank, for example by transmitting a vacuum via the cassette, by implementing an additional set of valves such that the depression generated by the pump in the cassette is transmitted to the booster tank.

The additional black water tank can be inserted between the gray water tank and the cassette so that, during the rinsing sequence, the greywater passes through the additional tank thus rinsing before reaching The tape.

In a variant, the pump is replaced by a device for injecting compressed air, or any other fluid such as clear water that can cause a phenomenon of overpressure, force-feeding or natural siphon in the cassette discharging water black. Also, in other variants, the pump can be replaced by a device creating a black water call, for example by means of a device generating a vacuum (by elongation / extension of a telescopic tube) or a vacuum, by example by the flow of gray water through a double Venturi cone.

In a variant shown in Figure 13, the terminal block has a plurality of fasteners 1318 which allows to associate pumps requiring a different number of attachment points to be arranged at the terminal block. Thus, in the example shown in Figure 13, different pumps requiring 3 or 4 screw points can be arranged at the block 1310 of fixing, which increases the number of pumps that can be implemented in the invention.

In addition, it should be noted that in this embodiment the grinding chamber is integrated into the terminal block as previously described.

In this same variant shown in FIG. 14, it also appears that the joining block 1310 consists of two elements 1410 and 141 2 that can be arranged by a reversible connection, of the clipping, screwing or latching type.

Claims

REVE NDI CAT IONS

1. Compact system for storing and evacuating black water for a mobile vehicle, this compact system comprising a mobile storage cassette (400) intended to be extracted from a housing of said vehicle, this cassette (400) being provided with an opening (402) for manually emptying said cassette (400), characterized in that the opening (402) of the cassette (400) is arranged to a pump (408) for performing an automatic drain black water of said cassette (400).

2. System according to claim 1 characterized in that the pump is removably arranged in the cassette (400).

3. System according to claim 1 or 2 characterized in that the pump is arranged in the cassette via a junction block (41 0) which comprises at least one inlet (600) in rinsing water of the cassette (400). ).

4. System according to claim 3 characterized in that the at least one inlet is connected to the pump (408).

5. System according to claim 3 or 4 characterized in that the at least one inlet (600) in rinsing water is in the vicinity of an outlet (604) of the black water in the block (41 0) junction of such so that a portion of this rinsing water is sucked by the pump directly after admission to the block (410) junction.

6. System according to one of claims 3, 4 or 5 characterized in that the junction block (41 0) has a second inlet (602) in rinsing water.

7. System according to one of claims 3 to 6 characterized in that at least u ing rinsing water is intended for a gray water with soapy liquids.

8. System according to one of the preceding claims characterized in that the pump (408) is arranged at the junction block (410) by means of a fastener for guiding an outlet (412) pumped black water.

9. System according to claim 8 characterized in that said attachment is formed by a conical connection of the pump (408) on the block (410) junction.

10. Block (41 0) provided with a pump (408) for a compact system for storing and evacuating black water for a mobile vehicle, of the camper or caravan type, this compact system comprising a cassette (400) mobile storage device intended to be extracted from a housing of said vehicle, this cassette (400) being provided with an opening (402) for manually emptying said cassette (400), characterized in that said block (410) of the cassette ( 400) is arranged at a pump (408) so as to automatically drain the black water in said cassette (400).

1 1. Vehicle employing a mobile storage cassette toilet system to be extracted from a housing of said vehicle provided with a system according to one of claims 1 to 9.