Patent Application
20080087272
Further characteristics, features and advantages of the present invention will be more readily understood from the detailed description that is given below by way of non-limiting example with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
With reference to the above-cited Figures, a food processing or preparation apparatus according to the prior art comprises:
According to the present invention, the suction mouth 6 is not situated in a raised position at the height of the upper edge of said second front wall 5, but is rather positioned exactly in correspondence to the portion at which the worktop 2 intersects the same second vertical wall 5, and is substantially as large as the worktop itself. Preferably, it is closed on top by a grille 7, so as to prevent foreign matters of any kind from being able to be accidentally introduced in the same suction mouth and giving rise to a number of possible problems, such as for instance the possibility for them to cause the suction fan to run into a locked condition.
Said second upper front wall 5 can therefore be made in the form of just a thin curved plate. With reference to
In this final configuration, it protrudes backwards with quite remarkable an overhang, so that its rearmost edge 8 comes to lie in a position located beyond the vertical 9 of the centre-line extending across said casing 1.
It has in fact been found that such backward-oriented overhang, when combined with the suction effect on the horizontal plane ensured by the horizontal orientation of the final length of said wall 5, is effective in ensuring a very efficient, optimum performance in extracting the fumes and gases generated at and released from the worktop 2, including the fumes being released from the zone of the worktop that is not actually covered by the overhanging portion of said wall 5.
In addition, at least in the upper portion thereof, such second wall 5 is suitably made of a clear, i.e. see-through material, so that a customer standing in front of the apparatus is capable of conveniently and unobstructedly viewing the food lying on said worktop 2 for a proper selection thereof, as well as for watching the manner in which the selected food is prepared.
Said grille 7 is furthermore advantageously inclined towards the worktop 2, i.e.—as clearly shown in FIG. 3—it features such an inclination as to make sure that the suction vector A of the gases being extracted by said grille has both a top-down vertical component Av and a horizontal component Ao moving parallel to the direction that goes from the rear wall 4 to the front wall 3.
In view of further facilitating the conveyance of the gases towards said grille, and preventing any portion of said gases from being able to escape from or at the sides, between the side edges 13 and 14 of the worktop 2 and the side edges 15 and 16 of said second upper wall 5 there are advantageously provided two vertical wings 17, 18 that preferably rise up from the rear corners 13A and 14A of the respective said side edges 13 and 14.
Under the afore-cited mouth 6—and connected thereto—there is provided a vertical, sensibly central suction conduit 10, in which there is provided an appropriate suction fan 11.
Downstream from said fan, said conduit 10 extends downwards to debouch into two filtering chambers 20 and 21, which are provided and arranged symmetrically relative to said conduit 10, these two chambers being in general located near the bottom and at the sides on the rear of said outer casing.
Owing to these chambers 20, 21 being not only symmetrical, but also fully similar to each other, only one of them will be described hereinbelow, wherein it shall be readily appreciated that the considerations set forth in this connection obviously apply—in a corresponding manner—also to the other filtering chamber.
With reference to
Inside this filtering chamber 20 there is arranged a filter plate 30, of a kind as generally known as such in the art, that is adapted to intercept and filter out even the smallest solid residues and fume and fat particles contained in the gas passing through said filter plate. It is on the other hand a largely known and established fact that the larger the filtering surface area of a filter plate whatsoever, the more efficient will be the filtering effect of such filter plate and the smaller the pressure drop it implies in the flow of gas passing therethrough.
Accordingly, in view of taking as full as possible an advantage of the planar surface area available in the filtering chamber 20, the above-cited filter plate 30 is arranged between two parallel and diagonally opposite sides 31 and 32 of said chamber 20, so that the filtering chamber 20 itself is practically subdivided into two prismatic volumes 23 and 24, as this is schematically illustrated in
In addition, in view of ensuring that such filtering plates 30 are capable of being readily removed and replaced from the outside, in particular by the same operator in attendance of the apparatus, these filter plates are arranged so as to lie orthogonally to the plane of the rear wall 4 and capable of being accessed, i.e. reached from such wall.
Therefore, when the filtering chamber 20 is made and provided so that:
Said filter plate 30 can of course be oriented outwards and—at the same time—upwards, as illustrated in
Such different arrangement, however, does by no means affect the need for the respective inflow port 20A to direct the flow into a definite one, e.g. the one indicated at 23, of said prismatic volumes 23 and 24, and the related outflow port 20B to open up into the other one, e.g. the one indicated at 24, of said prismatic volumes and, obviously, towards said rear wall 4.
Fully apparent from the above description and, in particular, the illustration appearing in
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PN2006A000077 | Oct 2006 | IT | national |
