The present invention relates to a screw compressor.
There are screw compressors having a function of supplying fluid from outside to the inside of a compression chamber. The purpose of supplying fluid is to seal a clearance inside the compression chamber, cool the gas during the compression process, lubricate sliding male and female rotors, and the like.
One of conventional techniques for spraying fluid into a compressor is a technique of forming water supply portions on a casing wall corresponding to a compression working chamber to spray water from the water supply portions into the compression working chamber. In this conventional technique, small holes are formed in the bottom of each of the water supply portions, inclined at an angle of θ with respect to the axis of the hole, to communicate with the outside, so that water guided to the blind hole is sprayed from the small holes into the compression working chamber over a wide range. Patent Document 1 discloses an example of such a conventional technique.
In a screw compressor using the above-described conventional technique, the water sprayed from the small holes of the water supply portion spreads over a wide range in the compression working chamber. Here, the water sprayed from the inclined small holes spreads in a membrane form after colliding with each other, and then is atomized. Accordingly, it requires a certain distance before the water sprayed from the water supply portion is atomized through a state of being water membrane.
However, the distance until the water being atomized is limited because there is a rotating screw rotor ahead in the direction of the water being sprayed from the water supply portion. For this reason, when the distance between a lobe bottom of the screw rotor and the water supply portion is short, or when the rotation speed of the screw rotor is high, there is a risk of the water adhering to a surface of the screw rotor without being sufficiently atomized.
The present invention is intended to sufficiently atomize fluid, supplied from the outside of a screw compressor to a compression chamber via a fluid supply portion, in a shorter distance from the fluid supply portion.
A screw compressor according to the present invention solves the above-identified problem and includes a screw rotor and a casing to house the screw rotor. In addition, the screw compressor includes a fluid supply portion to supply fluid in a membrane form into a compression chamber defined in the casing. The screw rotor has a male and female rotors that have twisted lobes and are rotated while meshing with each other. The casing is formed on the inner surface thereof with a male bore in a cylindrical shape to cover the male rotor and a female bore in a cylindrical shape to cover the female rotor. Here, an intersection line, on a higher pressure side, of the male and female bores is defined as a compression intersection line. Additionally, in a bore development view, a trajectory made by the first intersection of an extension line of the lobe ridge of the female rotor and the lobe ridge of the male rotor being moved, along with the rotation of the male and female rotors, is defined as a trajectory line. The bore development view shows the male and female bores developed on a plane. In this case, an opening of the fluid supply portion to the compression chamber is positioned between the compression intersection line and the trajectory line. Alternatively, the fluid supply portion supplies fluid in an atomized form into a compression chamber defined in the casing.
The present invention allows fluid supplied from the outside of a screw compressor via a fluid supply portion to a compression chamber to be sufficiently atomized in a shorter distance from the fluid supply portion.
Embodiments of the present invention are described in detail, with reference to the drawings as required. Note that in the drawings, common components and similar components are denoted by the same reference numerals, and duplicate descriptions thereof are omitted as appropriate.
First, a first embodiment of the present invention is described with reference to
The screw compressor 100 according to the present embodiment includes the screw rotor 1 and a casing 4 to house the screw rotor 1, as shown in
In addition, the screw compressor 100 includes a suction bearing 5 and a delivery bearing 6 for rotatably supporting the male rotor 2 and the female rotor 3, respectively, and a shaft sealing member 7 such as an oil seal or a mechanical seal. Here, a “suction” side refers to a side in the axial direction of the screw rotor 1 to suck gas such as air, and a “delivery” side refers to a side in the axial direction of the screw rotor 1 to deliver gas.
Generally, the male rotor 2 has a suction end thereof connected to a motor 8 as a rotary drive source via a rotor shaft. The casing 4 is formed on the inner surface thereof with a male bore 9 in a cylindrical shape to cover the male rotor 2 and a female bore 10 in a cylindrical shape to cover the female rotor 3. The male rotor 2 and the female rotor 3 are respectively housed in the casing 4 with a clearance of several tens to several hundreds μm from the male bore 9 and female bore 10 of the casing 4. There are two intersection lines of the male bore 9 and the female bore 10, where a lower pressure intersection line is defined as a suction cusp 11 and a higher pressure intersection line is defined as a compression cusp (compression intersection line) 12.
The male rotor 2 rotationally driven by the motor 8 rotationally drives the female rotor 3, to expand and contract a compression chamber 13 defined by grooves of the male rotor 2 and female rotor 3, and the male bore 9 and female bore 10 surrounding the rotors. This makes gas such as air be sucked through a suction port 14, be compressed to a predetermined pressure, and then be delivered through the delivery port 15.
In addition, fluid is injected to the compression chamber 13, the suction bearing 5, the delivery bearing 6, and the shaft sealing member 7 from the outside of the screw compressor 100 through a fluid supply hole 16, a suction bearing fluid supply hole 17, and a delivery bearing fluid supply hole 18.
The present embodiment of the screw compressor 100 as described above is made to spray fluid supplied into the compression chamber 13 from the outside of the screw compressor 100 over a wide range in the compression chamber 13, to improve effect of cooling the compressed gas, and the like.
Next, a description is given in more detail of a structure in the present embodiment to supply fluid into the compression chamber 13 from the outside of the screw compressor 100. In the present embodiment, the screw compressor 100 is a screw air compressor to compress air, and fluid supplied from outside into the compression chamber 13 is lubricating oil. Hereinafter, a case is described where an object to be compressed is air and lubricating oil is supplied into the compression chamber 13.
As shown in
Next, the jet impingement nozzle 23 is described with reference to a cross-sectional view of
The lubricating oil flows through the fluid supply hole 16 via the bottomed hole 16a into the first fluid injection hole 24 and the second fluid injection hole 25. The lubricating oil injected through each of the first fluid injection hole 24 and the second fluid injection hole 25 collides with each other, and then is spread in a membrane form over a surface S (surface along the depth direction of the plane of paper in
There is a clearance between the intersection of the male lobe ridge 26 and the compression cusp 12 and the intersection of the female lobe ridge 27 and the compression cusp 12, which serves as an internal leak path between adjacent subspaces of the compression chambers 13 having different pressures (see
Next, flowing of the compressed air near the blow hole 30 is described with reference to
In
The screw compressor 100 according to the present embodiment is basically configured as described above. Next, advantageous effects of the screw compressor 100 is described.
The screw compressor 100 includes the screw rotor 1, the casing 4, and the fluid supply portion 38 to supply fluid in a membrane form into the compression chamber 13 defined in the casing 4, as shown in
In such a configuration, the compressed air leaked through the blow holes 30 is accelerated and then interferes with the oil membrane flowing out through the fluid supply portion 38 (jet impingement nozzle 23). Fluid is generally liable to be split and broken in proportion to the square of the velocity difference from the surrounding gas. Therefore, interference with the compressed air flowing at a high velocity promotes atomization of the oil membrane flowing out through the fluid supply portion 38, even if the oil membrane is not spread wide enough.
This decreases the distance from a point where the fluid membrane is formed to a point where the fluid is atomized. For this reason, sufficiently atomized lubricating oil is supplied to the compression chamber 13, even when the space required for atomization is not sufficiently secured in a small-sized compressor or the velocity difference between air and lubricating oil is small due to a slow rotation speed of the screw rotor 1 (see
Besides, the fluid supply portion 38 is positioned closer to the compression cusp 12 than the trajectory line 32. This allows for preventing the compressed air leaked through the blow hole 30 from colliding with the male rotor 2 before interfering with the oil membrane flowing out through the fluid supply portion 38. In contrast, if the fluid supply portion 38 is positioned on the compression cusp 12, the effect of promoting atomization of the lubricating oil through interference with the compressed air is small because the leaking compressed air is not accelerated.
According to the present embodiment, the fluid supplied to the compression chamber 13 from the outside of the screw compressor 100 (see
In addition, not only the distance required for atomizing the lubricating oil is shortened, but also the particle diameter of the lubricating oil is reduced, so that the heat transfer area between the compressed air and the lubricating oil is increased to promote the cooling effect of air in the compression process. Additionally, the reduced particle diameter of the lubricating oil causes a particle of the lubricating oil to have reduced mass and therefore to be easily affected by the flow of the compressed air. The lubricating oil atomized by the compressed air flowing at a high velocity is then spread over a wider range. This makes heat exchanged between the compressed air and the lubricating oil in a wider range. Moreover, the lubricating oil seals the internal clearance of the compression chamber 13 over a wider range, to suppress internal leaks of the compressed gas. As a result, power of the screw compressor 100 is reduced to achieve energy saving.
Further, in the present embodiment, the fluid supply portion 38 includes the fluid injection holes 24 and 25, with respective axes thereof being inclined to each other in the same plane to intersect in the compression chamber 13, as shown in
Furthermore, the jet impingement nozzle 23 of the fluid supply portion 38 is attached in
Next, a second embodiment of the present invention is described with reference to
The second embodiment differs from the first embodiment in
The lubricating oil flowing into the fluid supply hole 16 through the lubricating oil supply passage 33 is mixed with the compressed air flowing from the compressed air supply portion 34, and then atomized, as shown in
In addition, the particle diameter of the lubricating oil being reduced has the same advantageous effects as those of the first embodiment. That is, the cooling effect of the compressed air is promoted, the lubricating oil is spread over a wider range to have heat exchange in a wider range, and the internal clearance is sealed over a wider area, to achieve energy saving of the screw compressor 100.
Further, fluid is supplied from the fluid supply portion 38a in such an inclined direction that the forefront comes closer to the female rotor 3 than a starting end of the supplied fluid, as shown in
Next, a third embodiment of the present invention is described with reference to
The third embodiment is different from the first embodiment in
A division surface 36 of the male casing 4a, which contains the compression cusp 12, is provided with a recess 37, as shown in
The lubricating oil flowing from the outside of the casing 4 into the fluid supply portion 38b, as slit-shaped passage, flows from the passage, in a membrane form, into the compression chamber 13. The lubricating oil in a membrane form (oil membrane) then interferes with the compressed air leaking through the blow holes 30, is broken and split, and is atomized. With the recess 37 defining the passage for the lubricating oil provided on the division surface 36 of the male casing 4a, an oil membrane is formed over a wide range from the suction end surface 28 to the delivery end surface 29. Then, the oil membrane is made to interfere with the compressed air leaking through the blow holes 30, to supply the atomized lubricating oil into the entire compression chamber 13.
Incidentally, it is generally difficult and requires large machining costs to machine a passage, which has a width of 1 mm or less and is long in the depth direction, using a tool such as an end mill. In contrast, the above-described method of machining the recess 37 in the division surface 36 of the male casing 4a, and making the division surface 36 of the female casing 4b serve as one of the inner wall surfaces of the passage does not require large machining costs. Accordingly, extremely thin oil membranes are formed at low cost in wide areas in the compression chamber 13 near the blow holes 30. The extremely thin oil membranes are then made to interfere with the compressed air leaking through the blow holes 30, to make the oil membranes sufficiently atomized in a short distance from the communication portion between the fluid supply portion 38b and the compression chamber 13. This achieves energy saving of the screw compressor 100.
Hereinabove, the present invention has been described based on the embodiments, but the present invention is not limited thereto and includes various modifications. For example, the embodiments have been described in detail for the purpose of illustrating the present invention, and the present invention is not necessarily limited to those having all the configurations described above. The configurations of the embodiments may partly be deleted, or added or replaced with another configuration.
For example, in the above-described embodiments, the fluid supplied from the outside of the screw compressor 100 into the compression chamber 13 is lubricating oil, but is not limited thereto and fluid such as water or coolant may be used.
In addition, in the above-described embodiments, air is described as an example of an object to be compressed, but another gas such as nitrogen may be used.
1: screw rotor, 2: male rotor, 3: female rotor, 4: casing, 4a: male casing, 4b: female casing, 9: male bore, 10: female bore, 11: suction cusp, 12: compression cusp (compression intersection), 13: compression chamber, 16 fluid supply hole, 23: jet impingement nozzle, 24: first fluid injection hole, 25: second fluid injection hole, 26: male lobe ridge, 27: female lobe ridge, 31: extension line, 32: trajectory line, 33: lubricating oil supply passage, 34: compressed air supply portion, 36: division surface, 37: recess, 38, 38a, 38b: fluid supply portion, and 100: screw compressor.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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JP2017-169138 | Sep 2017 | JP | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
PCT/JP2018/029337 | 8/6/2018 | WO | 00 |
Publishing Document | Publishing Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
WO2019/044390 | 3/7/2019 | WO | A |
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
3138320 | Schibbye | Jun 1964 | A |
3820923 | Zweifel | Jun 1974 | A |
5653585 | Fresco | Aug 1997 | A |
20120171069 | Huang et al. | Jul 2012 | A1 |
Number | Date | Country |
---|---|---|
27 20 214 | Dec 1977 | DE |
2 863 060 | Apr 2015 | EP |
45-19671 | Jul 1970 | JP |
48-64509 | Sep 1973 | JP |
52-135407 | Nov 1977 | JP |
58-8288 | Jan 1983 | JP |
2001153073 | Jun 2001 | JP |
2003-184768 | Jul 2003 | JP |
2015-78623 | Apr 2015 | JP |
Entry |
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Extended European Search Report issued in European Application No. 18851421.0 dated Nov. 25, 2020 (eight(8) pages). |
Japanese language Office Action issued in Japanese Application No. 2017-169138 dated Dec. 8, 2020 with English translation (eight (8) pages). |
International Search Report (PCT/ISA/210) issued in PCT Application No. PCT/JP2018/029337 dated Sep. 11, 2018 with English translation (five (5) pages). |
Japanese-language Written Opinion (PCT/ISA/237) issued in PCT Application No. PCT/JP2018/029337 dated Sep. 11, 2018 (four (4) pages). |
Taiwanese-language Office Action issued in counterpart Taiwanese Application No. 107130559 dated Apr. 19, 2019 (five (5) pages). |
Number | Date | Country | |
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20200386229 A1 | Dec 2020 | US |