Patent Application
20230072689
The present invention relates to a pod machine for preparing espresso, with separate waste collection of the pod different components. Particularly, the invention relates to an espresso machine of this type, which provides for an effective automatic separation of the pod coffee content and the pod empty body, thus allowing the user to dispose of these two components promptly and easily, in a separate manner.
As known, machines using pre-packaged pods containing ground coffee dosed for one espresso have been widespread since many years in the field of home and professional espresso machines. Said pods are currently available in a wide variety of types, as they ensure the best preservation over time of the ground coffee aromas, when made of aluminium or plastic. As a matter of fact, the ground coffee is prepared and packaged into pods in plants apt to preserve its natural aroma and freshness, through processing under inert gas to prevent the coffee from oxidation while being processed and subsequently stored.
However, whilst offering such unmatched quality, all the pod espresso machines currently available on the market raise the significant drawback of their used pods disposal as general waste, which drawback is now particularly felt precisely because of this type of machines being widespread, and of the consequent huge number of used pods they produce, on a global level, to be necessarily disposed of as general waste. In practice, the essential problem is that the user has substantially no possibilities to separate the two components of a used pod, i.e., the spent coffee dregs and the pod empty body, which on the contrary would both be susceptible of 100% recycling, respectively as organic material and as metal/plastic material to be recycled within the production process.
To overcome this problem, several alternatives have been attempted, all currently available on the market, though none of them resulted to be really effective.
A first solution involved changing the pod shell material by replacing the aluminium or plastic materials with biodegradable materials thus realizing so-called pads, or by making biodegradable pods by use of biodegradable plastic material, e.g., PLA. Such solution has proven to be satisfactory for the possibility of recycling the used pod as a whole, as compostable material, but it remains rather critical with respect to the pod long-term shelf-life, especially under high humidity and temperature conditions. In such conditions, in fact, the ground coffee organoleptic properties would undergo a gradual degradation, leading to a distinctly worsened taste of the espresso drink thus produced, that eventually causes a reduced shelf-life of such product compared to that of traditional pods.
Besides, when using biodegradable pods and pads, it shall be considered the often not negligible drawback of biodegradable materials releasing different substances to the ground coffee. As a matter of fact, such biodegradable materials undergo an initial “degradation”, when subjected to thermal stress at high temperatures and pressures—as typically occurs in the infusion process when the hot water passes therethrough at high pressure—with partial release of their components, and consequent contamination of the produced espresso drink by the characteristic substances contained in the biodegradable materials—e.g. cellulose from the pad filter paper, chlorine as a whitener of the paper itself, and the like. Accordingly, the technology of compostable or biodegradable material has shown to be less effective in principle for storage, as it shortens the shelf-life of pods or pads produced therewith: as a matter of fact, the amount of material being the same of aluminium or PP, they degrade much faster, also releasing into the espresso drink different compounds, which are not necessarily harmful to health but often sufficient to alter the taste of the coffee drink.
A second solution aimed instead at promoting a used pod collection service, variously encouraging users through economic means and promotional activities, to collect all used pods at the manufacturer and to provide here for the separation of the components and their recycling through industrial methods. Such a solution has proven to be efficient as regards the quality of recovery, but completely unsatisfactory, instead, as regards the percentage of the product actually recycled, relative to the total amount of sold product. As a matter of fact, being substantially based on the users' voluntary commitment to the collection project, such a solution is implemented only by those who are sensitive to the ecological problem, which now still represent a large minority, with resultant recovery percentages largely lower than 50% and therefore completely unsatisfactory.
A third solution finally provides for the withdrawal from pod machines in favour of the adoption of machines that use coffee beans, grinded at the moment of use. Such a solution has considerably developed in recent years, indeed, as it ensures an excellent opportunity of recovering spent coffee dregs as compostable organic fraction through complete elimination of any pod. However, the quality level of the coffee beans stored inside the machine tank cannot compare to that of the ground coffee sealed into aluminium pods, since the heat produced by the espresso machine itself and the same ambient air inside the tank promote the coffee gradual oxidation and the dispersion of the most volatile aromas. The quality of the espresso drinks produced by such machines shows a markedly downward trend over time—starting from the highest quality at each new load of fresh coffee beans—which is the more noticeable the longer the coffee beans remain in the tank, i.e., the lower is the daily consumption of coffee in the single machine.
On the other hand, the espresso machine according to such third solution is now also criticized from an ecological point of view since it has a higher overall carbon footprint, compared to pod machines, related to the machine itself energy consumption in standard operation. To the present day, the combination of such different drawbacks caused the espresso machines which use coffee beans to be widely used only among those users who make large use of such machine, as for example in offices, where a new coffee load runs out in a relatively short time and therefore the quality deterioration is low.
A last solution, disclosed in WO2011/051867, provides for the use of a distinct separating device placed inside the machines dispensing drinks from pods, which separates the pod content from the pod body. Such a separating device takes charge of the pod upon the drink dispensing by opening the pod and removing its content. In actual fact, such a solution had no practical application on the market especially because, in addition to the complication of requiring a double movement and relative positioning of the pod—first in the drink delivery machine and then in the separating device—it entails a drawback to the extent that the pod content is already wet with the working liquid when it is removed from the pod, and it is therefore impossible to obtain an accurate cleaning of the pod, particularly in the case of fine powders such as coffee, thus making the application substantially useless, since the empty pods still containing part of their unremoved content again are a special waste that cannot be directly recycled without a further washing operation.
Therefore, there still remains the unsolved problem, now addressed by the present invention, of providing an espresso machine of new concept, which could combine the high quality and long shelf-life proper to the pod machine coffee, with a more environmentally friendly approach, i.e., with the possibility of separately recycling the two components of the pod, totally regardless of the willingness of users to separate the components themselves or to join a recovery program for the collection of used pods of the respective manufacturers.
Addressing this problem, a first object of the invention is therefore to provide a pod espresso machine wherein the spent coffee dregs and the relative containing pod body can be collected separately, so that the user can easily and properly dispose of those two separated materials.
Another object of the invention is then to provide a pod espresso machine wherein any possible interference is avoided between a wet area of the machine, where the preparation of the coffee drink occurs, and a dry area of the same machine, where a separation between the ground coffee and the containing pod is carried out.
This problem is solved, and the object achieved, by means of an espresso machine having the features disclosed in claim 1. Other preferred features of said espresso machine are disclosed in the secondary claims.
Further features and advantages of the espresso machine according to the present invention will however become more evident from the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment thereof, provided purely by way of non-limiting example and illustrated in the attached drawings, wherein:
In order to solve the problem indicated above, an espresso machine which operates according to an extremely innovative operating principle is provided according to the present invention. In such espresso machine, in fact, the pod is used only as a mere container of ground coffee; which means that in the first step of the process of making an espresso, the pod is opened, emptied of its ground coffee content in a dry condition, and then squashed and ejected into a recovery container for the collection of the used, emptied, and squashed pods. The ground coffee is supplied, instead, to an extraction block where it is treated in a per se known way for preparing the espresso drink, and then discharged into a separate recovery container for the collection of spent coffee dregs, thus obtaining a desired and complete separation of the two components of the pod. Also, this result is achieved with no need of direct involvement of the user who does nothing but use the pod in a completely traditional manner, enjoying the relative advantages, and eventually finds the two pod components already perfectly separated into two distinct containers, thus being enabled to properly dispose of them in a separate manner, i.e., the spent coffee dregs as a compostable fraction, and the metal or plastic pod body as a recyclable fraction.
In order to achieve this object, the espresso machine according to the present invention takes advantage of components which are already well known in the various types of espresso machines with pods and coffee beans, respectively, both for the devices of pod retention/ejection and for the devices extracting the espresso drink from the ground coffee; due to this reason, such components are synthetically described in a first part of the present description, i.e. by simply indicating their function and arrangement, since a person skilled in the art is fully capable of using the aforementioned known devices in an obvious way in the espresso machine according to the present invention. In the second part of the present description, a preferred exemplary embodiment of the espresso machine of the present invention will then be provided, wherein the innovative pod opening function and ground coffee removal is also perfectly integrated with the subsequent functions of coffee dispensing and spent coffee dregs ejection, which functions have in fact been revised in an original way to provide an espresso machine with a highly compact and efficient structure.
For ease of description, reference will be made in the following to embodiments of espresso machines which make use of aluminium pods. Based on the information provided below, a person of ordinary skill in the art can easily develop other suitable embodiments of such machines tailoring it for other types of pods, such embodiments being therefore all equally included within the scope of protection of the invention.
In order to open and empty the coffee pod C, one end of the moving drawer 1 is equipped with a punch 4 and the opposite end with a loading piston 5, both integral with the moving drawer 1 walls. Furthermore, the moving drawer 1 is moved to the various work positions by a fixed rotary electric motor 6, which drives a screw/nut 7/8 assembly wherein the screw 7 is housed free to rotate inside the loading piston 5 and the nut 8 is integral with the body of drawer 1. As an alternative to that illustrated above, other types of linear actuators can obviously be used, provided that they are able to accurately move the moving drawer 1 to the different work positions described hereinafter.
In a first operating step, which is illustrated in
When the step of opening the coffee pod C is so completed, the moving drawer 1 is moved to the opposite direction, i.e., to the left in the drawings, to start the step of emptying the coffee pod C. To be sure that all the ground coffee comes out, such emptying is preferably carried out by completely turning inside out the coffee pod C side walls, as clearly illustrated in
At this point, while the extraction block E provides for the espresso drink extraction in a per se known way, the motor 6 rotates in the opposite direction bringing the moving drawer 1 back to the right in the drawings, thus causing a gradual folding of the coffee pod C walls turned inside out through the same punch 4, until squashing them into a substantially flattened shape of minimum bulk, as schematically illustrated in
A preferred embodiment of the espresso machine of the present invention will now be described, which includes innovative mechanical solutions both for the part relating the emptying of the coffee pod C and the steps of extracting the coffee and discharging the spent coffee dregs. It is understood that even this more detailed embodiment is for illustrative purposes only of a preferred implementation of the invention, which is therefore not limited thereto.
The operations of emptying the coffee pod C of the coffee powder P and squashing it to reduce its bulk take place in the loading cylinder 10, while the operation of infusing hot water on the coffee powder P for brewing the espresso drink takes place in the infusion cylinder 12. In order to reduce the espresso machine bulk, while keeping strictly separated a dry area of the espresso machine intended for the coffee powder removal from pods C, and a wet area of the espresso machine intended for the coffee drink brewing, according to a main feature of the present embodiment, the loading cylinder 10 and the infusion cylinder 12 are mutually integral and form a cylinder assembly rotating on the espresso machine body, thus allowing the loading cylinder 10 and the infusion cylinder 12 to be alternately brought in vertical alignment above the extraction cylinder E. The above-described cylinder assembly is rotated by a cylinder gearmotor 20 (
This mechanical configuration makes it possible to effectively achieve the objects indicated above and, at the same time, to carry out the operations of emptying the pod C and loading the extractor group E when the loading cylinder 10 is in a position of vertical alignment above the extraction cylinder E, and the operations of infusing hot water and discharging the empty squashed pod C, when the infusion cylinder 12 is in a position of vertical alignment above the extraction cylinder E and the loading cylinder 10 is in a tilted position. All these operations are thus highly assisted by the fact that the direction of movement from time to time desired for the moving parts—i.e., coffee powder, infusion water and empty squashed pod—corresponds with the gravity direction.
In the espresso machine loading step, a coffee pod C is introduced into the slide 9 (
The movement of the loading piston 11 is driven by a piston gearmotor 16, by means of a toothed wheel 17 and a rack 18c integral with the loading piston 11; the action of the piston gearmotor 16 is in contrast to spring means 11s which tend to bring the loading piston 11 back to its rest position corresponding to the top dead end of its stroke. The selected drive is suitable to be very effectively used as the only drive of both cylinders of the rotating cylinder assembly, since the rotational movement of said cylinder assembly enables the lateral disengagement of the rack 18c from the toothed wheel 17 and the subsequent engagement of this latter in the rack 18i which is integral with the infusion piston 13 movable within the infusion cylinder 12, whose function will be better described below.
In order to open and empty the coffee pod C, a punch 4 formed by a series of suitably shaped and spaced blades is placed inside the loading cylinder 10 and just below the coffee pod C housing seat, so as to allow the closing film of the coffee pod C to be cut and the ground coffee P to pass therebetween. As a matter of fact, as the loading piston 11 is moved downwards by the piston gearmotor 16, it progressively presses the coffee pod C against the punch 4, causing the closing film of the pod C to be cut and consequently the ground coffee P to be emptied out, and then the walls of the pod C itself to progressively fold against the punch 4, until the empty coffee pod C is squashed into a substantially flattened shape of minimum bulk, as schematically illustrated in the drawings.
During such operation, the ground coffee P falls by gravity from the coffee pod C into the underlying loading compartment of the extraction cylinder E (
It should be particularly noted that, also in this case, the pod C is emptied before the operation of extraction of the espresso drink, which means when the ground coffee is still perfectly dry and therefore falls off in full, with great ease, from the inner walls of the pod C.
Once completed the step of loading the ground coffee P into the extraction cylinder E, the cylinder gearmotor 20 is operated to drive the cylinder assembly into rotation from the position illustrated in
In this new position of the cylinder assembly, the toothed wheel 17 of the cylinder gearmotor 16 is engaged with the rack 18i integral with the infusion cylinder 13, so that actuation of said cylinder gearmotor 16 can also cause the infusion piston 13 to lower in contrast to its respective spring means 13s to the position illustrated in
To allow an easy, complete, and automatic ejection of the spent coffee dregs PE, the base of the extraction cylinder E—which is the portion carrying the plate filter onto which the ground coffee P is loaded—makes up the head of an ejection piston 21 movable within the extraction cylinder E, which ejection piston 21 also houses the outlet duct 15e. The ejection piston 21 is movable from a position of ground coffee P loading, wherein the ejection piston 21 head is at the bottom of the extraction cylinder E (
As a matter of fact, as illustrated in
Once the spent coffee dregs PE have fallen into the coffee dregs container F, the ejection gearmotor 24 returns the extraction cylinder E back to the loading position, while the cylinder gearmotor 20 returns the cylinder assembly to the position wherein the loading cylinder 11 is vertically aligned above the dispensing cylinder, as illustrated in
The various operating steps illustrated above and specifically the operation of the piston gearmotor 16, the cylinder gearmotor 20, the hot water supply 14 and the ejection gearmotor 25, are controlled in a per se well-known manner and according to a predetermined program, by a dedicated processor provided within the espresso machine.
From the foregoing description it is clear how the espresso machine according to the present invention has fully achieved the desired objects, fully taking advantage of the benefits of the system for packaging and distributing ground coffee in pods, while avoiding its related drawbacks, since the components of the coffee pod C are separated just before the step of wet extraction of the espresso drink, in a special “dry” portion of the espresso machine, and then collected in separate containers, so that the user can later properly dispose of them with greatest ease without need of intervention on the empty squashed coffee pod C.
However, it is understood that the invention should not be considered as limited to the specific arrangements illustrated above, which are only exemplary embodiments thereof, but that different variants are possible all within the reach of a person skilled in the art, in order to adapt the machine to the different types of coffee pods available on the market, without thereby departing from the scope of protection of the invention itself, which is only defined by the following claims.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 102020000004957 | Mar 2020 | IT | national |
| 102021000005333 | Mar 2021 | IT | national |
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/IB2021/051911 | 3/8/2021 | WO |
