Patent Application
20130164414
Single serve beverage makers, such as the Keurig brand, have grown in popularity in the recent years. Consumers find benefit from producing fresh beverages such as coffee on demand while avoiding the waste of making an entire pot of coffee. These devices use disposable plastic coffee pods or disposable beverage filter cartridges, otherwise known as K-Cups, which are simple to use and change out quickly. Unfortunately, the disposable filter cartridges add to landfill waste as the plastic is mixed with other non-biodegradable materials as well as the compostable beverage media and not recyclable. Consumers continue to raise environmental concerns as some manufacturers produce in excess of one billion of these disposable plastic filters each year.
The complexity of the shape of these disposable filter cartridges also adds to the manufacturing costs and environmental waste. Plastic cups must be molded. Then a basket shaped filter must be folded and inserted into the cup and attached to the upper edge of the cup forming a strong bond. Next, the filter basket must be filled with beverage medium and finally the top of the cup is sealed with a foil cover sometimes after the free space inside the cartridge is filled with inert gas to maintain freshness. The final product is impermeable and preserves the beverage medium inside yet it is complex and costly to manufacture.
Other problems occur with the use of these cartridges. The beverage makers that employ these cartridges must pierce both the top and the bottom as part of their use. The plastic cup must be precisely controlled in thickness such that the cup is strong enough to withstand shipping and handling while weak enough to allow it to be easily pierced by the beverage maker. If the cup is not rigid enough and the piercing mechanism is dull then the sidewall of the container may buckle making the cartridge becomes defective. There can be other issues such as sealing and leaking which allow the filter to tear or beverage medium granules to contaminate the beverage.
Additionally, the shape of the cup or more importantly the filter volume is equally wide and deep. The fluid flows through the filter cartridge but has little time to extract the full amount of flavoring from the beverage medium. The time the fluid resides in the cartridge is far too short to allow efficient extraction. The result is that additional beverage medium must be added to compensate for the short dwell time to extract the full flavor, further increasing cost of the beverage. The effect can be seen when reusing the same filter cartridge to brew another beverage such as coffee. The second beverage is nearly as dark and strong in flavor as the first, demonstrating that there is an excess amount of beverage medium in the cartridge which goes to waste.
A reusable filter cartridge has been introduced for single serve beverage dispensers, U.S. Pat. No. 6,658,989 by Sweeney, at al. These reusable beverage filter cartridges are miniaturized versions of those found in larger beverage makers consisting of a miniature brew chamber and a miniature filter basket with a lid. Unfortunately, the small scale filter cartridge is difficult to fill due to its small size opening. It is easy to spill the beverage medium when filling the cartridge. Furthermore, it is difficult to remove the wet waste from the small opening after the beverage has been produced as the waste tends to stick vigorously to the sides of the small housing.
The construction of the disposable cartridges also use round disks of filter paper. Unfortunately, their round construction creates considerable waste during the manufacturing process. The cup shaped filters inside the disposable beverage filter cartridges are created from flat filter paper by cutting round disks from flat paper stock. The space between the disks cut from the filter paper is waste. Filter paper waste is more costly than ordinary waste since effort went into creating the paper with precisely controlled pore size, thickness and other parameters.
As apparent from the above examples a need exists which allows a high degree of efficiency in the design and manufacturing of a disposable beverage filter and reusable beverage filter cartridge. An improved system must minimize impact on the environment by allowing easy recycling of the filter package, it should minimize waste of the materials of construction, and it should minimize the use of beverage medium itself. Balancing these different requirements may require slight modifications which may depend on the economic environment. The design should allow the manufacturer to switch the construction of the disposable filter and reusable filter chamber to minimize costs depending on the prevailing costs for raw materials and customer preference.
The present invention addresses the problems previously outlined by providing a permeable beverage filter package separate from the impermeable plastic container used to protect the beverage medium thereby allowing easy recycling of the plastic components and composting or recycling of the filter package. The beverage filter chamber is reusable and forms the brewing chamber for the beverage when combined with the filter package. As such, the use of single serve beverage makers, such as the Keurig brand, becomes much more environmentally friendly.
Embodiments of the present invention provide a beverage filter package whose construction is such that the liquid medium diffusing through said filter package is allowed to dwell for a period of time longer than provided for by prior art allowing more infusion of the beverage medium into said liquid and/or a reduction of beverage medium for the same amount of beverage strength.
Embodiments of the present invention provide a beverage filter package whose construction reduces or eliminates waste of raw materials such as filter paper by providing a construction which is based on the use of flat filter paper stock which is used to produce filter packages formed efficiently from rectangular shapes. One embodiment creates a generally cylindrically shaped filter package whose shape allows for long dwell time of the liquid with the beverage medium thereby making efficient use of the beverage medium. Another embodiment creates a generally square shaped filter package whose shape allows for further efficient use of filter paper. Both shapes of the disposable filter package include allowances for easy removal of the filter package from the reusable chamber by means of an attached string-like mechanism or an easy grip appendage on the filter package.
Embodiments of the present invention include a reusable beverage filter chamber whose construction includes a flexible sealing lid which applies pressure around the lip of the beverage filter chamber and forms both the liquid inlet to the beverage brewing chamber and a tight, leak proof seal around the removal mechanism portion of the filter package.
A feature of the preferred embodiments is that these disposable filter packages and reusable beverage filter chamber allows potential waste and cost reduction of the consumables used in single serving beverage makers, such as the Keurig brand, while maintaining the ease of use and simplicity of using a single serve beverage maker. The filter package allows efficient use of filter paper and beverage medium in its construction. Furthermore, the filter package construction and contents separates the non-biodegradable impermeable plastic components which in prior art form the brew cartridge and freshness seal from the compostable components of the filter paper and beverage medium. The reusable filter chamber is designed to efficiently hold the filter package and allow easy insertion and removal. The combination of the efficiency of the present invention with the flexibility benefits of a single serving beverage maker delivers a solution which allows the consumer to feel good about using single serve beverage systems without the concern of plastic waste from billions of plastic cups.
The present inventions now will be described more fully hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which some examples of the embodiments of the invention are reviewed. The use of these examples by no means limits the scope of the invention as those skilled in the art will recognize the value obtained from various combinations of elements of the present invention.
In an embodiment of the present invention, the environmentally friendly disposable filter package 100 is shown in
The filter package is inserted into a filter chamber 300a which consists of a basket whose shape allows the permeable filter package to present a surface to the inlet orifice 520 and whose outlet port consists of at least one substantially porous surface. The filter package is inserted into a beverage filter chamber 500a whose top is sealed with a beverage chamber top seal 510. Seal 510 may be smaller than the top of the brew chamber and may exist as part of the brewing system. Orifice 520 forms the inlet of the brewing chamber and orifice 530 forms the outlet of the brewing chamber as shown in
For practical purposes, filter packages 100 and 200 might be constructed with small amounts of thermoplastics or adhesives to allow the filter paper to maintain a specific shape, those materials may not decompose or compost well compared to the filter paper and beverage medium. Alternatively, filter package 200a represents the natural shape of 100 and 200 which can be created with only filter paper encasing beverage medium and sealed with 210c which can be a small metal clip or bound string, both of which are compatible with composting.
Another embodiment shown in
Another embodiment of the invention is shown in
Yet another embodiment of the invention is shown in
Preferred embodiments in
One preferred embodiment of the invention shown in
The final packaging of the invention is shown in
