Lubrication – Lubricators – Lubricant heating and/or cooling device
Patent
1997-08-15
1999-11-02
Graysay, Tamara L.
Lubrication
Lubricators
Lubricant heating and/or cooling device
184 624, 165119, 123196AB, F01M 110
Patent
active
059752459
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to conditioning arrangements for conditioning a liquid circulated through a system, and in particular to regulating the temperature of the liquid.
Liquid may typically be circulated through a system to provide motive power to one or more elements of the system or to provide lubrication to bearings of an engine or the like.
Considering an engine lubrication system, a lubricating liquid such as, oil, is circulated by way of a pump driven by the engine and passed through a conditioning arrangement which conditions the liquid by cleaning the liquid of solid contaminants.
It is known to provide such a conditioning arrangement with both so-called full flow cleaning elements and by-pass centrifugal cleaning elements.
Examples of such arrangements containing both cleaning element types are disclosed in GB-A-2160796, GB-A-2160449 and DE-C1-4306431, all of which disclose coaxially arranged full flow and centrifugal cleaning elements within housing means that is arranged to be coupled to an engine block. The housing means forms part of a liquid lubricant circulation system of the engine, receiving a liquid lubricant therefrom and returning it thereto by way of aligned passages or ducts. Most of the liquid, after passage through the full flow element, is returned to the engine under pressure in order to lubricate bearings etc. whereas a proportion of the lubricant by-passes that element to the centrifugal cleaning element from which it is returned directly to a reservoir or sump.
GB-A-2160449 discloses coaxially disposed cleaning elements, one surrounding the other, and capable of separate removal in an axial direction, whereas GB-A-2160796 discloses cleaning elements axially displaced and accessible from different axial directions by way of separately removable parts of the housing means. DE-C1-4306431 discloses both cleaning elements axially displaced within a single housing and removable in the same axial direction.
While the presence of both cleaning element types in a conditioning arrangement serves to condition the liquid in an efficient manner by removing contaminant particles of all sizes, cleaning the liquid of solid contaminants does not necessarily place the liquid in optimum condition if the operating conditions are such that the liquid is too cold to flow properly or so hot that its viscosity falls.
It is of course known to have sump heating means to raise the temperature of liquid lubricant at start-up in extremely cold climates, notwithstanding that in an internal combustion engine, the temperature is soon raised to an operating norm.
It is known also to have heating and/or cooling means associated with lubricating liquid for use by an engine as it is circulated and cleaned by a typical full flow cleaning element.
Such means may take the form of a heat exchanger matrix disposed separately of the engine block, usually where it is in a stream of cooler air caused to pass across it, and liquid is piped from the engine thereto and back again. Such a matrix may have a full flow filter in line with the liquid flow, but the use of a discrete matrix and external pipework increase both initial and maintenance costs, assuming space is available, while also being potentially vulnerable to damage. The damage that can be caused by loss of liquid lubricant, even at a small rate in a relatively short interval (compared with the wide tolerance of viscosity changes acceptable to most engines,) means that temperature regulation of the liquid by such externally effected lubricant cooling is employed only where it is considered essential and, not merely beneficial to engine efficiency.
As an alternative to such remote cooling of liquid lubricant, engines which have the liquid cleaned by a full flow cleaning element of the self-contained kind, that is, as a sealed canister containing a paper, or like, filter element and adapted to be screwed onto a mounting block which also transfers liquid to and from the engine, may have the mounting block adapted to include or support a
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Cox Ian M
Jephott Dominic G E
Penny Steven C
Purvey Ronald J
Fenstermacher David
Graysay Tamara L.
The Glacier Metal Company Limited
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