Patent Application
20130075070
The present invention relates to a component and parts in a heating device, and more specifically to a heat exchanger tube.
Generally speaking, a plurality of heat exchange tubes are always installed inside a heating device or a preheating device to heat up liquids or gases. Conventional heat exchanger tubes are circular straight tubes where heat exchange efficiency depends on tube lengths and tube materials. In order to increase heat exchanger efficiency, turbulent fins are disposed inside heat exchanger tubes, however, the installation of turbulent fins will increase manufacture cost and assembling time.
Nakado et al. had disclosed a heat exchanger tube as revealed in US Patent publication No. 2002/0125002 A1 having a heat exchanger tube has a tube body whose interior is defined as a passage of a fluid and whose inner and outer surfaces are defined as heat entrance and exit surfaces of the fluid. It is characterized in that a bowl-shaped bulging wall portion bulging toward the direction of the opposite wall portions is formed on one or both of the opposite wall portions of said tube body, the bulging leading ends of said bowl-shaped bulging wall portions are defined as connecting portions linearly protruding and linearly brought into contact with the opposite wall portions and are fixed thereto. However, the extruded portions of the bowl-shaped bulging wall portions are flow blocking points which can not effectively slow down the fluid but cause fluid turbulent leading to poor heat exchanger efficiency.
The main purpose of the present invention is to provide a heat exchanger tube to offer a winding flow channel longer than the length of the heat exchanger pipe without disposing turbulent fins to increase heat exchanger efficiency.
The second purpose of the present invention is to provide a heat exchanger tube to offer a better heat exchanger configuration by rotating the orientation of two opposing flattened surfaces of its flattened pipe.
According to the present invention, a heat exchanger tube is revealed comprising a flattened pipe having two non-flattened ends connected with a first opening and a second opening. A plurality of first half-slacking narrows and a plurality of second half-slacking narrows are arranged in an interlaced zigzag pattern such that a winding flow channel is formed inside the flattened pipe to increase heat exchange efficiency. In a preferred embodiment, each of the first half-slacking narrows and the second half-slacking narrows consists of a pair of adjacent indentations disposed on one flattened surface of a flattened pipe to achieve a unit body structure of a flattened pipe.
With reference to the attached drawings, the present invention is described by means of the embodiment(s) below where the attached drawings are simplified for illustration purposes only to illustrate the structures or methods of the present invention by describing the relationships between the components and assembly in the present invention. Therefore, the components shown in the figures are not expressed with the actual numbers, actual shapes, actual dimensions, nor with the actual ratio. Some of the dimensions or dimension ratios have been enlarged or simplified to provide a better illustration. The actual numbers, actual shapes, or actual dimension ratios can be selectively designed and disposed and the detail component layouts may be more complicated.
According to the preferred embodiment of the present invention, a heat exchanger tube is illustrating in
The heat exchanger tube 100 comprises a flattened pipe 110 having two non-flattened ends connected with a first opening 111 and a second opening 112, i.e., the diameter or length of the first opening 111 and the second opening 112 is smaller than a flattened width of the flattened pipe 111 but greater than a flattened height of the flattened pipe 111. In the present embodiment, the first opening 111 and the second opening 112 are circular where the diameter D of the first opening ranges from 19 mm to 26 mm and the flattened width of the flattened pipe 110 ranges from 26 mm to 35 mm.
Besides, a plurality of first half-slacking narrows 120 and a plurality of second half-slacking narrows 130 are formed in the flattened pipe 110 where the first half-slacking narrows 120 and the second half-slacking narrows 130 are arranged in an interlaced zigzag pattern such that a winding flow channel 140 is formed inside the flattened pipe 110 to increase heat exchange efficiency as shown in
In a more specific structure, the flattened pipe 110 has a first sidewall 115 and a second sidewall 116 disposed between the edges of the two flattened surfaces 113 and 114 where the first half-slacking narrows 120 are formed on a first line on the flattened surfaces 113, 114 adjacent to the first sidewall 115 and the second half-slacking narrows 130 are formed on a second line on the flattened surfaces 113, 114 adjacent to the second sidewall 116, as shown in
As shown in
To be more specific, preferably there is no physical contact between each pair of the indentations 121 and 122 and between each pair of the indentations 131 and 132 so that the curve of the winding flow channel 140 can become changeable. When the flowing speed inside the flattened pipe 110 becomes faster, the curve of the winding flow channel 140 has less amplitude to enable faster exhausting of the gases inside the flattened pipe 110. When the flowing speed inside the flattened pipe 110 becomes slower, the curve of the winding flow channel 140 has larger amplitude to enable longer heat exchanging time of the gases inside the flattened pipe 110.
It is different from the conventional heat exchanger tubes where liquid fluid flows through the conventional heat exchanger tubes, however, the heat exchanger tube 100 can specifically flow high-temperature gas more than 120 centigrade degree. A plurality of heat exchanger tubes 100 as mentioned above can be installed inside a hot-water heater 10 where the flattened pipes 110 are installed inside a water tank 11 of the hot-water heater 10 where the first opening 111 is connected to an exhaust pipe 12 of the hot-water heater 10 and the second opening 112 is connected to a combustion chamber 13 of the hot-water heater 10. The blower 14 of the hot-water heater 10 provides combustion-supporting gases entering through a gas inlet 16 to mix with fuel then burn inside a burner 15 to generate high-temperature gases inside the combustion chamber 12 of the hot-water heater 10 where the high-temperature gases are introduced into the flattened pipe 110 of the heat exchanger pipe 110 through the second openings 112. Moreover, the flowing of the high-temperature gases is affected by the first half-slacking narrows 120 and the second half-slacking narrows 130 to form the winding flow channel 140, therefore, the high-temperature gases have sufficient heat exchanged with the water stored inside the water tank 11. The high-temperature gases are then exhausted from the first opening 111 and flowed to the air-exhaust channel 12 where the temperature of the high-temperature gases will dramatically be reduced and exhausted from the exhaust 17 of the hot-water heater 10. On the other hand, the stored water in the water tank 11 will be supplied by a cold water inlet 18 and heated through the combustion chamber 13 and the high-efficient heat exchanger pipe 110 and flowed out from the hot-water outlet 19 at the central opening of the water tank 11. Furthermore, without any limitation, the heat exchanger tubes 100 also can be installed in any known heating devices or preheating devices such as boiler.
Through the implementation of circular design of the first opening 111 and the second opening 112, the orientation of the flattened pipes 110 of a plurality of heat exchanger tubes 100 can be adjusted before installed inside a hot-water heater 10 or other heating devices or preheating devices. As shown in
The above description of embodiments of this invention is intended to be illustrative but not limited. Other embodiments of this invention will be obvious to those skilled in the art in view of the above disclosure which still will be covered by and within the scope of the present invention even with any modifications, equivalent variations, and adaptations.
