Patent Application
20210059226
The present invention provides an aquarium heater, and more particularly to an off-water shutdown protection mechanical heater.
Fishes are poikilothermal creatures. Each species of fish has specific upper and lower limits of temperature resistance as the most optimum temperature range. In the most optimum temperature range, fishes demonstrate the most vivid conditions of feeding, breathing, and digesting and also show enhanced metabolism for rapid growth. When the inhabitation environments of aquariums are not properly kept in the optimum temperature range for a long term, the aquariums may suffer abnormality of metabolism, restricted growth, and even death.
People keep and raise fishes as pets all over the world. However, different areas on Earth have different weather conditions. Although indoor temperature in the summertime may be sufficient to prevent the water temperature of an aquarium tank from becoming too low, in the wintertime, the water temperature of the aquarium tank drops as varying with the indoor temperature. To maintain a comfortable vivarium condition for aquatic animals or fishes, most of the breeders provide a heater in the aquarium tank in the wintertime. Early-day heaters have evolved from traditional heaters, which require manual observation of the temperature of the aquarium tank and manual control of a switch of the heater for shutting down the heater, to mechanical heaters and electronic heater that features automatic detection of water temperature by means of a heater for timely taking automatic operations of deactivation and activation.
The mechanical heater has a temperature control structure and principle involving a bimetal plate having two metals of different coefficients of thermal expansion. Due to different degrees of curving resulting from different temperatures of water, automatic contacting and detaching are carried out to control a heating element to generate heat or not.
However, to date, no mechanical heater having an off-water shutdown protection function is available. This often causes a situation that the aquarium heater shows extra high residual heat or improper control of water temperature may occur. For example, when the water level of an aquarium drops due to for example evaporation of water, if water is not properly supplemented, the glass tube that is operated to generate heat for heating might get broken due to excessively high temperature. This is a drawback of the conventional mechanical heater that must be improved and overcome.
An objective of the present invention is to provide an off-water shutdown protection mechanical heater that ensures electricity can be quickly cut off after removal out of water.
To achieve the above objective, the present invention comprises a tube and a cap mounted to an end of the tube, wherein the tube comprises, as being arranged in an interior thereof, an off-water protection transducer, one of a relay and a bidirectional triode thyristor (TRIAC), a circuit board that includes a bimetal plate, and a heating element, wherein the off-water protection transducer, the one of the relay and the TRIAC, the bimetal plate, and the heating element are electrically connected in sequence to form a control loop; wherein when the off-water protection transducer detects a situation of being immersed in water, the one of the relay and the TRIAC turns on to conduct electricity and the bimetal plate detects a temperature of water and undergoes deformation by the temperature to control the heating element to generate heat or not; and when the off-water protection transducer detects a situation of being removed out of water, the one of the relay and the TRIAC turns off to cut off electricity, making the heating element not generating heat.
The off-water protection transducer is used to ensure that electricity is quickly cut off upon removal out of water so as to prevent the prior art problem of excessively high residual heating that results in breaking of the glass tube due to high temperature.
Referring to
Referring to
It is further noted that in
When the off-water protection transducer 30 detects a situation of being removed out of water, the one of relay and TRIAC 40 turns off to cut off electricity, making the heating element 70 not generating heat.
The efficacy of the present invention is that the off-water protection transducer 30 is used to ensure that electricity is quickly cut off upon removal out of water so as to prevent the prior art problem of excessively high residual heating that results in breaking of the glass tube due to high temperature.
Referring to
In an embodiment, the tube 10 is selected as a glass tube.
In an embodiment, the heating element 70 is selected as an electric heating filament.
In summary, the present invention indeed fulfils an expected goal and provides an off-water shutdown protection mechanical heater, which possesses utilization.
