Refrigeration – Gas controller or director – Cooled gas directed relative to cooled enclosure
Patent
1995-11-13
1998-02-17
Doerrler, William
Refrigeration
Gas controller or director
Cooled gas directed relative to cooled enclosure
62419, F25D 1706
Patent
active
057181233
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
RELATED INVENTION
This invention is related to inventions disclosed in U.S. application Ser. No. 08/553,443 filed Nov. 11, 1995, and U.S. application Ser. No. 08/537,789 filed Oct. 23, 1995.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a refrigerator having a cool air passage capable of circulating cool air into a refrigerating compartment.
As shown in FIG. 1, a conventional refrigerator is constituted by mounting a freezing compartment door 6 and a refrigerating compartment door 7 on a refrigerator body 4 of a thermally insulated structure forming a freezing compartment 2 and a refrigerating compartment 3 which are partitioned from each other by an intermediate partition wall 1 therebetween.
A compressor 11 is installed in a motor compartment 11M that is positioned under the refrigerating compartment 3, a condenser and capillary tube (not shown) are mounted in the interior of the body 4 or placed in the machine compartment 11M, and an evaporator 12 is mounted on the rear wall of the freezing compartment 2. The components are connected to each other by refrigerant tubes (not shown) to perform a refrigeration cycle.
A fan 13 for forcing cool air from the evaporator 12 into the freezing compartment 2 and the refrigerating compartment 3, is disposed above the evaporator 12. In order to guide the flow of the cool air, a grill 14 is placed before the fan 13 and a cool air duct 15a is disposed at the rear wall of the refrigerating compartment 3. Here, numeral 19 indicates a control damper for controlling the quantity of cool air which is introduced into the refrigerating compartment 3, and numeral 8 indicates shelves for receiving food items.
As a method for supplying cool air to the refrigerating compartment, a conventional refrigerator generally adopts a shelf-by-shelf cool air discharged method. As shown in FIG. 2, in this method a plurality of vertically spaced cool air discharge openings 16a, which are provided for several areas partitioned by the shelves 8, is arranged on the cool air duct 15a, so cool air is discharge towards the front into each area formed by the plurality of shelves 8.
In the above shelf-by-shelf cool air discharge method, uniform distribution of the cooled air is not achieved since areas in the direct path of the flowing air receive more cooled air than the remote areas. Arrangement of the food items further contributes to this problem. As an example, a bulky food item near a cool air discharge opening blocks the flow of air, thus such an area receives less cooled air. Still a further problem exists in that since the cool air discharge openings 16a are perpendicular to the flow direction of cool air going through the cool air duct 15a, only a small portion of the cool air from the evaporator 12 passes through the upper cool air discharge openings, but most of the cool air flows down through the cool air duct 15a and discharges into the refrigerating compartment 3 through the lowest cool air discharge openings 16a. Accordingly, food items on the upper shelves of the refrigerating compartment 3 can not keep a proper refrigerating temperature, whereas the food items on the lower shelves are overcooled. Another problem exists in that some newly stored food items may be at an initial temperature significantly higher than the temperature in the cooling compartment. In this case, a need arises for concentrating the cooled air flow to the warm/hot food item to effect rapid cooling as well as to avoid warming of the immediately surrounding food items. Conventional systems do not offer such a compensating means. Accordingly, the above described situations contribute to an undesired condition in which there may exist a significant variation of temperatures throughout the cooling compartment.
In an attempt to distribute the cool air more evenly, a three-wall cool air discharging method has recently been developed. As shown in FIG. 3, a refrigerator according to this method has a plurality of cool air discharge openings 16s on the side walls of the refrigerating compartment 3 as well a
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patent: 3096629 (1963-07-01), Rembold
patent: 4750416 (1988-06-01), Graham
patent: 5076070 (1991-12-01), Takushima et al.
patent: 5315846 (1994-05-01), Lee
Kim Yong Myoung
Park Seak Haeng
Doerrler William
Samsung Electronics Co,. Ltd.
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