Liquid heaters and vaporizers – Wick
Patent
1996-04-08
1998-06-30
Joyce, Harold
Liquid heaters and vaporizers
Wick
122 552, 392395, 239145, F24F 608
Patent
active
057718458
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method and to a device for vaporizing a liquid.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
It is known that, to vaporize a liquid, an electrical resistor immersed in a relatively significant depth of water may be used. With this concept, the time required to heat the liquid in order to vaporize it is relatively long and the vaporization yield is mediocre, particularly with sequential operation. This is the case, for example, with a certain number of steam boilers using combustion gases.
However, a steam generator is known from French patent FR 78 08 201 which, although it uses an electrical resistor for beating a porous body immersed at its base in a layer of water, has the characteristic of vaporizing the water contained in the porous body relatively quickly. The water is replaced by the pumping capacity of the porous body. In order to achieve an optimum yield, the depth of the layer of water is regulated in dependence on the density of the heat flux transmitted to the body, according to its pumping capacity. This method is applicable to all kinds of energy such as combustion gases, for example.
Although the use of the pumping capacity of a porous body can thus improve the performance of steam boilers in certain cases, there are limits since the quantity of liquid contained in the body decreases with the pumping height. A first consequence of this phenomenon is that, in practice, it limits the height of a porous body to a few cm and a second consequence is the maintenance of a small differential of variation of liquid depth if the yield is to be optimized in dependence on the heat-flux density.
Patent DE-C-158 050 may be considered in a certain way to be an example of this type of steam boiler.
Thus, in this German patent it is known, in particular, to provide the liquid vaporization device described: exposed to a certain ambient pressure, with liquid by the flow of the liquid in the substrate starting from an upstream portion, and region of the substrate, situated downstream of the upstream portion, and the liquid with which it is loaded, so that a least some of this liquid is vaporized therein.
In this patent, however, several wicks are used as the substrate and are supplied "by the effect of the suction force", that is the capillary pumping of the said wicks.
In so far as, as indicated above, the flow-rate of a wick supplied by capillary pumping decreases with the depth of the layer of supply water, FIG. 4 of DE-C-158 050 shows the advantage which may be achieved with the use of several supply containers disposed at different levels, the highest placing the substrate horizontally.
Tests carried out with d device or this type, however, show that the yield remains mediocre and that the quantity of liquid in the vaporization region quickly becomes too small, the time taken for the liquid to reach this vaporization region often being too long.
Moreover, the device of DE-C-158 050 is bulky and is not favourable for present-day industrial application, which requires high yield, compactness, low mass-production cost, reliability over time, etc.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The object of the invention is to provide a solution to a number of the problems mentioned above and, in particular, the invention proposes a method which can be implemented industrially in commercially advantageous conditions without exorbitant manufacturing and/or maintenance costs and which also offers flexibility of use and performance and reliability suitable for current needs.
The solution of the invention consists, in particular, for a given vaporization operation corresponding to certain energy-supply conditions, of establishing in the substrate ("capillary") an input flow-rate of liquid greater than the input flow-rate of liquid induced by capillarity and the vaporization of the liquid alone in the same substrate when in a horizontal position, the first-mentioned position of the substrate not necessarily being horizontal.
In order to achieve this, in the device of the invention, the mea
REFERENCES:
patent: 3869242 (1975-03-01), Schladitz
patent: 3977364 (1976-08-01), Gijsbers et al.
patent: 4419302 (1983-12-01), Nishino et al.
patent: 5267611 (1993-12-01), Rosenfeld
Deblay Philippe
Desage Robert
Giazzi Jean-Louis
Pistien Jacques
Cogia
Gaz de France
Joyce Harold
Superba
Wilson Gregory A.
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