Liquid purification or separation – Processes – Including controlling process in response to a sensed condition
Reexamination Certificate
1999-12-13
2001-05-08
Drodge, Joseph W. (Department: 1723)
Liquid purification or separation
Processes
Including controlling process in response to a sensed condition
C210S765000, C210S754000, C210S085000, C210S167150, C210S416200, C210S149000, C210S138000, C422S037000, C137S268000, C417S032000, C417S012000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06228272
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is related to a method and a device for servicing the water of a swimming pool. It essentially aims at automatizing the operations, which are needed for maintaining the swimming pool water in sanitary conditions, appropriate for its use.
By considering first the case of the preferred application of the invention for individual swimming-pools, which is the application for swimming-pools which people frequently install in their gardens for swimming, it first must be observed that a feature of such pools is that the water that they contain must regularly be disinfected in order to prevent a proliferation of the bacterial flora which develops therein. It should be added that the large water quantity, the implantation conditions and the economic requirements conjugate to forbid resorting to a permanent water renewal, so that the servicing of the sanitary cleanliness in practice is performed by sucking water in the swimming-pool to let it pass through an external purifying circuit, generally by filtration and addition of a disinfectant, before injecting back the thus purified water into the same pool.
There follows that the invention is not limited to a particular pool type and that its applications extend to many other fields wherein the same needs are felt.
Examples of the other pools for which an equipment according to invention is valuable are pools used in hydropathic centers, or for animal bathing or fish farming, or for growing fragile plants. Those pools, which the invention encompasses in the term of pool, can be very different in their shapes, their depths, and their capacities. Similarly, when a disinfectant addition is mentioned within the scope of the invention, this notion must be understood as covering the case of any constituent which should be added to the pool water to regenerate it to the desired content, for instance to compensate for the consumption or the destruction thereof as the pool is being used.
The present invention considerably simplifies the management of pools, in particular of individual pools, by its various characteristics, as more completely defined and described hereafter, while also globally reducing the servicing cost. Thanks to the thus performed automatic control, the user doesn't anymore need acting to control the disinfectant dosage as a function of the conditions which influence the consumption, and he doesn't risk disorderly, either insufficient or excessive, additions.
The invention however does not require measuring the disinfectant content in the pool water. For this reason and because of a large number of other features, the invention only requires for its implementation a simple, inexpensive and solid built equipment, while however bringing a good operating security for a satisfactory precision. This equipment furthermore is easy to install and can easily be adapted as a complement to water purifying and regenerating equipment already provided in the existing swimming pool installation.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
To reach its objects, the invention essentially consists of controlling the addition of the disinfectant (or of any other purifying or regenerating agent) by an action on the quantity of water which will be sampled and recycled by flowing through the purification circuit during a given time period (or period unit), which action is performed by controlling the members carrying out such circulation as a function of a detection of a measurable quantity having a one to one relationship with the disinfectant content needed in the pool water.
According to one of the features of the invention, said measurable quantity advantageously is the pool water temperature. Its measurement is very easy. It in particular is sufficient to place a temperature sensor on the branch line making up the purification circuit. And it is easy to determine, by experiment and calibration, a one to one relationship between this temperature and the purification and regeneration rate needed to bring the pool water back to the appropriate sanitary conditions. Whether the temperature increase for instance is a cause for an increase of the bacterial proliferation, or whether it in contrast is a consequence thereof, or whether it still is related with an unusual number of visitors, does not in any way matter here. It will in all cases automatically cause the needed disinfectant addition.
It will thus be understood that knowing the value of the disinfectant content itself is not needed within the scope of the invention. In a manner which may be called symmetrical, the invention also allows that a direct control of the injection of a dosed disinfectant quantity is not needed either inasmuch as, according to another feature of the invention, its incorporation is carried out in the purification circuit built as a branch circuit of the pool, in a manner naturally related with the quantity of sampled and recycled water by time period unit.
It should be noted that no proportional or other relationship between the quantity of water thus treated and the disinfectant dose injected into it is necessary. Here again, in practice and at least in the most current conditions, an autoregulation will result from a microbial proliferation exacerbated by a disinfectant insufficiency, with consequences on the sensed temperature, so that an experimental calibration is sufficient to insure a satisfactory operation in most situations.
In its preferred embodiments, the invention exploits the fact that a large number of traditionally used disinfectants for pool water maintenance are introduced by means of equipment in which the circulating water passes. This in particular is the case of the “pebbles” which release chlorine upon contact with the water due to its dissolution power, and of the chlorine generators where a sodium chloride solution is electrolyzed. Chlorine is thus exclusively produced when the water is circulated in the treatment circuit.
Other important features of the invention mainly are related with its application in the field of the private swimming pools. Since those pools are used in an intermittent manner, it is desirable on the one hand that the water treatment circuit does not permanently operate, but it also is desirable on the other hand that it operates each time for a duration sufficient to stir all of the pool water. In other words, this operation should last long enough to treat a water volume substantially matching the volume contained in the pool.
The invention advantageously provides a device for automatically managing the pool water maintenance operations in an installation which, in a manner traditional per se, includes a stirring pump with on-off controlled driving to circulate the water from the pool towards a treating circuit connected in closed loop with the pool and also includes means for injecting a disinfectant into said circuit, with said means preferably being such that the flow rate of the added disinfectant only depends, in normal operation, upon the water flow rate being circulated by the pump.
According to various features which should be considered here either separately or according to any technically operating combinations, such a device according to the invention includes a temperature sensor being mounted on said circuit to be responsive to the temperature of the water sucked from the pool and means which are process bound with said sensor to initiate the operation of the stirring pump at a predetermined constant flow rate for a duration depending upon the temperature sensed by the sensor, with such variable duration advantageously corresponding to an integer number of sequences (or time slots) of a predetermined fixed duration, and with said variable duration being calculated to circulate in said circuit a total water volume substantially equal to the pool water content.
Preferably, the operation is performed according to preset programs which in particular are differentiated by a daily number of stirring sequences of the same duration unit, among which the choice is determine
Cecil Terry K.
Drodge Joseph W.
Millen White Zelano & Branigan P.C.
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