The present invention is generally related to cooking devices, and more particularly is related to an electric grill.
Grills often use a heat source. Examples of such heat sources include combustible gas, such as propane, or solid fuel, such as charcoal. However, fire codes often prohibit grilling with open flames that gases or charcoal produce and users often prefer not working with open flames. In addition, refilling tanks holding the combustible gas, and purchasing solid fuel, can be inconvenient and expensive.
To address the above-mentioned issues, electric grills have been introduced. Electric grills alleviate the need for open flames, thereby alleviating the expense and inconvenience. Moreover, they comply with fire code regulations. Unfortunately, electric grills use wire type tubular elements that are too inefficient at a common household voltage of 120 volts to provide adequate temperatures for searing meat over reasonably sized cooking areas. Specifically, the inefficiency of electric grills prevents an electric grill from achieving the elevated temperatures necessary for performing cooking functions such as searing meat and from recovering back to cooking temperature after food has been distributed over the grilling surface. Thus, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the industry to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.
Embodiments of the present invention provide a system for providing an electric grill. In principle, a grill will heat primarily by thermal conduction or primarily by thermal radiation. This invention describes systems that utilize thin, film type electrical resistive heating elements that generate and transfer heat to the food either principally by conduction or principally by radiation.
When thermal conduction is the primary mode of heat transfer, the film element can be disposed over a surface of the grill either on top of the grilling surface or on the underside of the grilling surface. Heat is generated by passing an electrical current through the resistive film heating element whereupon the heat is conducted directly to the food if the element is on the top surface of the grill or through the metal grilling surface and then to the food if the element is on the bottom surface of the grill.
When thermal radiation is the primary mode of heat transfer, the film element can be disposed over a surface positioned either below the grilling surface or above the grilling surface. Here, electrical current passes through the film heating element such that the substrate upon which the element is deposited heats to a temperature sufficiently high for thermal radiation to be emitted in sufficient intensity to heat the food to the desired cooking temperature.
Briefly described, in architecture, one embodiment of the system, among others, can be implemented as follows. The electric grill has a grate, a first electrical insulator layer located above the grate, a heater layer deposited on a top surface of the first electrical insulator layer, and a top layer located over the heater layer for protecting the heater layer.
In other aspects, an electric grill and methods for fabricating an electric grill include a film heater layer that can be formed, for example, by depositing a film of resistive material using thermal-spray, kinetic spray, thick film deposition, evaporation, chemically vapor deposition, laser cladding, sputtering, pulsed laser deposition, cathodic arc deposition, and Physical Vapor Deposition (this is a common way to refer to a number of the above methods).
A film heater layer (also referred to herein as heater layer) can be provided, for example, on a heat shield, on a support tray for ceramic briquettes or the like, or on a heater panel suspended from the hood of the grill.
In one embodiment, an electric grill comprises a shaped metal sheet, that can be formed by stamp pressing, for example, to provide a grill having a plurality of raised ridges. A plurality of heater layers can be provided on the raised ridges and connected in parallel by a pair of conductive traces.
In yet another aspect, a grill includes an odor-reducing device having a heater layer.
Other systems, methods, features, and advantages of the present invention will be or become apparent to one with skill in the art upon examination of the following drawings and detailed description. It is intended that all such additional systems, methods, features, and advantages be included within this description, be within the scope of the present invention, and be protected by the accompanying claims.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following detailed description of the invention, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. The components in the drawings are not necessarily to scale, emphasis instead being placed upon clearly illustrating the principles of the present invention. Moreover, in the drawings, like reference numerals designate corresponding parts throughout the several views.
The present invention provides an electric grill, or barbeque, that uses electric resistive heaters (referred to as “heater layers”) in the form of coatings as a heat source. A power source may be connected to the heater layer to provide power to the heater layer, resulting in the resistive heater radiating energy (i.e., heating). An example of a process for making a resistive heater is described in the U.S. Pat. No. 6,919,543, assigned to ThermoCeramix, Inc., issued Jul. 19, 2005, and having been filed Nov. 28, 2001, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety.
The electric grill contains a supporting structure for holding food thereon (i.e., a grate), means for draining grease or any other liquid that comes from food cooking on the electric grill, and a heater layer. In accordance with the present invention, the heater may be provided as, for example, but not limited to, a coating.
Returning to
A top layer 240 is provided on a top surface of the heater layer 230 and may be provided as a coating or otherwise on the heater layer 230. The top layer 240 serves to protect the heater layer 230 from grease, other substances, and abuse. It should be noted that the top layer 240 may contain either a second electrical insulator layer 242 (e.g., a ceramic insulator), or a second electrical insulator layer 242 (e.g., ceramic insulator) and a metal layer 244 located on top of the second electrical insulator layer 242. It should be noted that the top layer 240 prevents the user of the electric grill 200 from being exposed to electrical hazard.
The exemplary electric grill 200 of
The heating plate 450 can be in the form of a heat shield. Heat shields are commonly used in gas grills and are located between the gas burner and the cooking grate. The heat shield protects the burner from corrosive drippings, helps to disperse the heat more evenly across the surface of the grill, and can vaporize drippings to infuse the food with additional flavor. A conventional gas grill can be easily retrofitted into an electric grill by providing the layered heating element of the present invention on a heat shield, such as shown in
Alternatively, the heating plate for 450, electrical insulator layer 460, and heater layer 470 may be located separate from the grate 410. As one example, the heating plate 450, electrical insulator layer 460, and heater layer 470 may be located above the grate 410, such as on a hood of a barbecue grill, or on a shelf like structure they can be positioned above food resting on the grate 410. In such an arrangement, energy radiates down to the food. Such a configuration would be ideal for broiling food resting on the grate 410.
The heater layers or film heater layers mentioned above are preferably provided as coatings, although other methods may be used for providing the heater layers. As coatings, the heater layers can be made using many different coating technologies. Performance of the coatings depends on materials chosen for the resistor, the dimensions of the element, and the method by which the coating is deposited. Examples of coating techniques include, but are not limited to: thermal spray, an example of which is described by U.S. Pat. No. 6,919,543, which has been incorporated by reference in its entirety; kinetic or cold spray, an example of which is described by U.S. provisional application No. 61/353,977, which has been incorporated by reference in its entirety; thick film deposition, evaporation, chemically vapor deposition, laser cladding, sputtering, pulsed laser deposition, cathodic arc deposition, PVD materials.
The layered heating element can be encapsulated in a protective layer to protect the heating element from environmental damage and to provide electrical insulation. The protective layer can provide a waterproof seal, and the grill 500 can be dishwasher-safe. The second insulating layer 523 can serve as the protective layer, or one or more additional layers can be provided over the second insulating layer 523 to provide the protective layer. In one embodiment, the protective layer can be a silicone material. Silicones constitute a class of materials that offer desirable engineering properties for layered heaters. Silicones can resist temperature extremes, moisture, corrosion, electrical discharge and weathering. Silicone materials also offer additional advantages for coatings applications. For example, they can be applied using inexpensive processes such as spray painting, dipping and brushing, and they can be cured using belt ovens operating at low temperatures. In one embodiment, both the first insulating layer 521 and the second insulating layer 523, which also serves as the protective layer, are comprised of silicone materials.
It has been found that despite having a relatively small thermal mass, the heating element in this thin-sheet embodiment is able to provide the requisite power for grilling food. By selecting the appropriate heater geometry and resistivity for the heater layer, the grill 500 can easily heat to and sustain cooking temperatures of 500-600 degrees Fahrenheit using conventional household power (e.g., 100-240 V).
In an alternative to the embodiment of
As previously discussed, a layered heating element can be provided as one or more coatings provided on the metal sheet substrate, and can be provided on the substrate using any known technique, such as thermal spray, kinetic or cold spray, thick film printing and deposition, chemical vapor deposition, evaporation, sputtering, kinetic spray, spray painting, dipping, brushing, laminating, and combinations of the same. In one embodiment, the resistive heating layer 522 (
The spray device 940 can be an arc wire thermal spray system, which operates by melting the tips of two wires (e.g., zinc, copper, aluminum, or other metal) and transporting the resulting molten droplets by means of a carrier gas (e.g., compressed air) to the surface to be coated. The wire feedstock is melted by an electric arc generated by a potential difference between the two wires. The spray gun is arranged above the substrate 910. The wire feedstock can be supplied to the spray gun by a feeder mechanism that controls the rate at which the feedstock material is supplied to the gun. The carrier gas is forced through a nozzle in the spray gun and transports the molten droplets at high velocity to the substrate 910 to produce the heating layer 522. The carrier gas can be supplied by one or more pressurized gas sources. In a preferred embodiment, the carrier gas includes at least one reactant gas that reacts with the molten droplets to control the resistivity of the deposited layer. The reactant gas can be, for example, an oxygen, nitrogen, carbon or boron-containing gas that reacts with the metallic material in the molten droplets to provide a reaction product that can increase the resistivity of the deposited layer relative to the resistivity of the feedstock material. The spray gun can be translated relative to the substrate 910 in order to build up a coating layer over multiple passes. The gun 21 can be attached to a motion control system such as a linear translator or multi-axis robot. A control system, preferably a computerized control system, can control the operation of the spray gun.
Other known spray techniques can be used in the present invention to deposit the film heater layer, including arc plasma spray systems, flame spray systems, high-velocity oxygen fuel (HVOF) systems, and kinetic, or “cold” spray systems.
The conductive traces 531, 532 (
The heater panel 740 can be composed of an insulating material, and the resistive heating layer 741 can be deposited as a coating directly onto the panel 740. The resistive film heating layer can be deposited using any of the methods described above in connection with
Where the panel 740 is made of an electrically conductive material, such as a metal, an insulating layer can be provided over the panel surface and the resistive heating layer 741 can be provided over the insulating layer.
A suspended panel 740 can deliver intense radiant heat to food that is positioned on the grate 710. The suspended panel 740 can be particularly advantageous for broiling. The panel 740 can be spaced from an interior wall of the hood 730 by one or more spacers, such as posts 750. One or more panels 740 can be mounted to any interior wall of the hood 730 or the bottom grill housing 720, and spaced away from the wall using suitable spacers.
The heater panel 740 can be the primary heat source for the grill 700. In other embodiments, the grill 700 can include other heat sources in addition to the heater panel 740, such as the electric heat sources as described in connection with
It is well-known that barbeque grills produce undesirable smoke emissions, including undesirable contaminants such as vaporized grease droppings, that are malodorous, potentially dangerous, and have greatly inhibited the widespread use of barbeque grills indoors or in other enclosed spaces. Accordingly, the odor-removal device 850 is provided to treat the smoke emissions from the grilling process, such as by catalytic conversion, in order to break down the complex organic contaminants into simpler molecules and thereby minimize the emission of foul odors from the grill 800.
In one embodiment, the odor-removal device 850 includes a catalyst material 852 and a layered heater 851 that is in thermal communication with the catalyst material 852. The catalyst material 852 acts upon the cooking emissions to break down complex organic molecules and reduce odors. The layered heater 851 heats the catalyst material 852 to a temperature sufficient to support a catalytic reaction.
In one embodiment, the catalyst material 852 is a layered metallic substrate coated with a high surface area aluminum oxide coating that has been impregnated with catalytically active elements. The substrate is processed to provide a plurality of channels through the substrate through which the smoke from the grill can flow. The catalytically active elements can be one or more elements from the platinum group metal series. The catalytically active elements act upon emissions from the cooking process to break them down into simpler forms. It will be understood that in addition to the layered metallic substrate, other substrate materials for supporting catalytically active elements can be used, such as a honeycomb structure, wire mesh, expanded metal, metal foam or ceramics. Also, other materials besides elements from the platinum group metal series, such as elements from Groups IVA to IIB of the periodic table, can be used as catalytically active elements.
Exemplary embodiments of catalyst materials 852 suitable for use in the present invention are described in U.S. Published Application No. 2009/0050129 to Robinson, Jr., the entire teachings of which are incorporated by reference herein.
Optionally the blower can be covered with a resistive heater surface to control the heat of the treated smoke re-circulated into the grill 1000.
The layered heater 851 is formed as a coating, and can comprise, for example, a deposited resistive film heating layer using techniques discussed above in relation to
It will be understood that the odor-removal device 850 can be advantageously utilized with any of the electric grill embodiments as described in connection with
In general, the heater layers in any of the embodiments of the present invention can be designed with knowledge of the applied voltage and power desired. From these quantities, a necessary resistance is calculated. Knowing the resistance and the material resistivity, the dimensions of the heater layers, or an element containing a heater layer, can then be determined. Depending on the deposition technique, the material resistivity can be modified to optimize the design. It should be noted that the heater layers or element containing a heater layer, may be shaped many different ways so as to provide heating in accordance with a required heating pattern.
There are many advantages to using a heater layer provided as a coating in accordance with the present invention including, but not limited to: the heater coating occupying almost no space and having almost no mass, thereby allowing a compact design and adding to thermal efficiency since the heater coating does not require energy to heat up; the heater coating being typically well bonded to a part, or substrate, that it is deposited on, thereby maintaining very little impedance to the flow of heat to that part (i.e., increased thermal efficiency); the heater coating distributing power over an area it covers; the heater coating having the capability of distributing power nonuniformly over its surface to compensate for edge losses, thereby providing uniform temperature distributions over a grilling surface; and, the heater coating being amenable to common manufacturing methods where cost and volume are important.
Examples of resistive heater coating layers and methods for the fabrication of heating elements, and various applications for heater coating layers, are described in commonly-owned U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,482,556, 6,762,396, 6,919,543, and 6,294,468, in commonly-owned U.S. Published Patent Applications Nos. 2003/0121906 A1, and 2008/0217324 A1, in U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 12/434,353, filed on May 1, 2009, and 12/156,438, filed on May 30, 2008, and in International Application No. PCT/US2009/45702, filed on May 29, 2009. The entire teachings of the above-referenced patents and patent applications are incorporated herein by reference.
It should be emphasized that the above-described embodiments of the present invention are merely possible examples of implementations, merely set forth for a clear understanding of the principles of the invention. Many variations and modifications may be made to the above-described embodiments of the invention without departing substantially from the spirit and principles of the invention. All such modifications and variations are intended to be included herein within the scope of this disclosure and the present invention and protected by the following claims.
This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/474,650, filed on Jun. 26, 2006, now U.S. Pat. No. ______, which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/693,609, filed on Jun. 24, 2005, the entire teachings of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
60693609 | Jun 2005 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
Parent | 11474650 | Jun 2006 | US |
Child | 12908013 | US |