Patent Application
20120103574
The present invention relates to a heating system utilizing waste heat from illuminating device, and more particularly to a heating system that utilizes heat energy in the waste heat produced by an illuminating device to heat water and supplies the heated water to the general public for use, so as to achieve the purpose of converting the waste heat from the illuminating device into a useful energy source.
For the current street lamps to meet the requirements of environmental protection, energy saving, and carbon reduction, conventional light emitting elements for the street lamps, such as halogen lamps, have been gradually replaced by light-emitting diodes (LED) lamps.
LED has been widely applied in many different fields since it was developed in 1955.
The working principle of an LED lamp is to convert electric energy into light energy. To manufacture an LED, first, group V elements, such as N, P, As and the like, and group III elements, such as Al, Ga, In and the like, are subjected to, for example, liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) or vapor phase epitaxy (VPE) to produce a group III-V compound semiconductor, such as GaP or GaAs, for use as a substrate. Then, a voltage is applied to an anode and a cathode of the substrate. When electric current flows through the substrate, electrons and holes combine with one another. At this point, the electrons fall into a lower energy level and accordingly, release surplus energy in the form of photons, that is, to emit light.
An LED street lamp is apparently advantageous in terms of its low power consumption and accordingly high energy-saving effect. However, the LED street lamp has the problem of heat dissipation, which has important influence on the design of the LED street lamp and seriously prevents the LED street lamp from being widely adopted. The heat produced by the illuminating LED must be timely removed from the street lamp. Currently, the heat produced by the LED street lamp is removed or dissipated mainly by air cooling. In air cooling, a heat sink is used to increase the heat-radiating area of the LED street lamp, and a cooling fan can be further installed to enable forced heat dissipation. A street lamp using multi-chip LED would produce more heat and therefore requires more efficient heat dissipation device to dissipate the produced heat. For this purpose, a water-cooling module is usually used to remove the heat produced by the multi-chip LED. The water-cooling module functions by circulating water through the multi-chip LED to absorb heat produced by the multi-chip LED and thereby cool the latter. The heat-absorbed water becomes heated and flows back to the water-cooling module. Since there is still difficulty in widely promoting the application of water cooling, most of the current LED street lamps are generally air-cooled. In brief, the conventional LED street lamp has the drawbacks of (1) low heat dissipation efficiency; and (2) failing to effectively utilize the produced heat thereof.
To overcome the drawbacks in the conventional LED street lamp, a primary object of the present invention is to provide a heating system utilizing waste heat from illuminating device, so that waste heat produced by LED or LEDs in an illuminating device can be converted into a useful energy source for heating water.
To achieve the above and other objects, the heating system according to the present invention includes at least one illuminating device and a water supply device. The illuminating device is provided with at least one light-emitting module that has one side in contact with at least one heat-dissipation device. The water supply device includes a pressurizing unit connected to a water source. The heat-dissipation device and the water supply device are connected to each other via a pipeline, so that water is supplied from the water supply device to directly cool the heat-dissipation device. Water that has been used to cool the heat-dissipation device is heated and supplied to, for example, a water reservoir for use by people. In this manner, waste heat produced by the illuminating device is effectively utilized as an energy source.
In brief, the present invention has the following advantages: (1) making good utilization of waste energy; and (2) achieving the purpose of carbon reduction.
The structure and the technical means adopted by the present invention to achieve the above and other objects can be best understood by referring to the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments and the accompanying drawings, wherein
The present invention provides a heating system utilizing waste heat from illuminating device.
The illuminating device 11 is provided with at least one light-emitting module 111, one side of which is in contact with at least one heat-dissipation device 112. The illuminating device 11 includes a support portion 11a and an illuminating portion 11b. In an embodiment of the present invention, the illuminating device 11 is a street lamp, the support portion 11a is a street lamp post having a mounting end fixedly mounted on the ground, and the illuminating portion 11b is a lamp shade fixed to another end of the street lamp post opposite to the mounting end. The light-emitting module 111 is internally assembled to the lamp shade.
In the present invention, the light-emitting module 111 is an LED module. The LED module includes at least a base 1111 and at least an LED lamp 1112 mounted on one side of the base 1111.
The heat-dissipation device 112 has an inlet 1121, an outlet 1122, and a water holding space 1123. The inlet 1121 and the outlet 1122 are communicable with the water holding space 1123.
The water supply device 12 includes a pressurizing unit 121 connected to a water source 122. The pressurizing unit 121 can be a pump, and the water source 122 can be a tap water pipeline or a water tower. While the present invention is described with the water source as a tap water pipeline, it is understood the water source is not necessarily limited to a tap water pipeline but can be in other forms. The water source is mainly used to supply water needed to remove the heat produced by the light-emitting module 111.
The pipeline 13 connects the heat-dissipation device 112 to the water supply device 12.
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