Animal husbandry – Milkers – With signals – indicators – registers – and timers
Patent
1990-03-22
1993-05-25
Sollecito, John
Animal husbandry
Milkers
With signals, indicators, registers, and timers
454193, 454 57, A01K 100
Patent
active
052130592
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an air conditioning unit for experimental animals, which comprises a housing with a bottom, a roof, two side walls, a rear wall, and a front wall having an opening which is closeable by means of at least one door and which permits access to the interior of the housing; one or more supporting means, e.g. shelves, forming two or more compartments each adapted to accommodate a number of cages with experimental animals; and means for conducting air through said compartments, more precisely in horizontal air currents which are taken into the housing in the form of supply air via inlet holes in one of said walls and which are sucked out in the form of exhaust air via outlet holes in an opposing wall.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
Various types of air conditioning units are widely used in connection with animal experiments, and in some cases the experimental animals are for a long time kept in an atmosphere which, in respect of purity, temperature, atmospheric humidity, toxicity etc., is highly exact and homogeneous for different animals.
In one type of unit which has previously been used in animal experiments, the supply air is conducted to the interior of the housing via coarse filters in the roof of said housing, and the exhaust air which has passed through the interior of the housing is evacuated via means adjacent to the bottom of said housing. The air current through said housing is, in other words, chiefly vertically directed. In actual practice, this means that the animals in the bottom compartment of the housing are kept in an atmosphere which may differ radically from that in the top compartment. Thus, the supply air taken in adjacent to the top compartment is pure and has a temperature and a humidity which can easily be adjusted in advance, but as the air passes the successive shelves and the animals kept in cages thereon, it will be exposed to the humidity from both the animals and their feed, additional heat supplied by the body heat of the animals, dust and fibre particles from both the animals and their feed, and infectious matter present inside the housing whether intentional or no. Consequently, the animals in the bottom compartment are kept in an atmosphere that has a temperature and a humidity which are considerably higher than in the atmosphere in the top compartment. Naturally enough, the air in the bottom compartment is far more contaminated than the air in the top compartment.
In another unit known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,305,347, the air is, to be sure, conducted in horizontal currents through the different compartments in the housing, but these currents are directed from one side wall to the other, opposing side wall. More precisely, the supply air is taken in via diffusion screens and a perforated metal sheet forming one side wall of said housing, the exhaust air being sucked out via a perforated metal sheet forming the opposing side wall, and diffusion screens associated therewith. However, also this unit is unable to solve, in satisfactory manner, the problem of an inhomogeneous atmosphere for different animals. In actual laboratory practice, the cages containing the animals are thus put on the shelves side by side in varying numbers, which means that the atmosphere in the cage closest to the side wall through which the supply air is taken in will have a different and lower temperature, humidity, degree of contamination, and toxicity than the atmosphere in the cage which is located at the opposing side wall in the same compartment. Another serious inconvenience impairing the unit of U.S. Pat. No. 4,305,347 is that the impure and frequently infected air slowly flowing through the interior of the housing when the door is closed, may without hindrance escape through the access opening to the housing when the door is opened, e.g. for inspection, feeding, the taking of specimens, etc. Thus, the exposure hazard to the people conducting the experiments is considerable.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention aims at obviating t
REFERENCES:
patent: 3924571 (1975-12-01), Holman
patent: 4550650 (1985-11-01), Denner et al.
Airchitecht I Soderhamn AB
Sollecito John
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