Patent Application
20250035301
This invention relates to a system for providing heat and/or hot water to a structure, such as an apartment building or commercial office building. In particular, the invention relates to a system for providing heat and/or hot water that uses a cavitation engine to convert a municipal water supply to steam for use in the structure.
Large structures, such as apartment buildings and office buildings, particularly older structures, rely on boilers to supply heat and hot water to the inhabitants. The boilers burn oil or gas to heat water from a municipal water supply, and either supply the hot water or turn the water into steam and supply the steam or hot water to the radiators throughout the building to heat the building.
There has been a movement, particularly in large cities such as New York, to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels for heating. One of the solutions to this is to replace the existing heating systems with newer systems such as heat pumps. However, this requires replacing the entire heating system of the building, including the individual radiators. This can be prohibitively expensive.
One method that has been used to generate energy, particularly to propel turbines in the marine environment, is the use of cavitation. It has been discovered that injecting water in a manner that forms cavitation bubbles in the water and impacting the water to crush the cavitation bubbles generates very high pressure superheated steam that can be used to generate electricity. U.S. Pat. No. 9,995,479, the disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety, discloses a cavitation engine that produces superheated steam from injected water. This concept is also disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 9,574,765, the disclosure of which is also incorporated by reference herein. The engine includes an impact chamber having an impact surface having a temperature of at least 375 degrees Fahrenheit, and a fluid injector having an outlet positioned to inject hyperbaric liquid water onto the impact surface of the impact chamber at supersonic velocities such that cavitation bubbles are present in the injected water. Impact of the water with the impact surface the crushes the cavitation bubbles in the injected water to produce superheated steam. These engines are used to propel turbines in the marine industry. It would be desirable to create a system that incorporates these engines to provide energy in other fields, such as heating and cooling of structures.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a system that does not rely on the burning of fossil fuels, but which can supply sufficient hot water and/or steam to heat a structure such as an apartment building or office building. It is another object of the invention to provide a system that can replace traditional oil or gas-fired boilers without the need to replace the pipes and radiators in the building, by utilizing a cavitation engine such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 9,995,479 in a novel system.
These and other objects are accomplished by a system for providing heat to a structure comprising a cavitation engine connected to a water supply, and to a discharge pipe, a condensate storage tank connected to the discharge pipe and being configured to collect condensate from the discharge pipe, and a pump connected to the condensate storage tank via a transfer pipe and being configured to pump the condensate out of the storage tank, and ether back into the cavitation engine for reuse. The condensate can be directed to a mixing tank for mixing with water from the water supply, and then back to the cavitation engine. The system creates a closed loop so that no water is wasted, and the energy generation is as efficient as possible.
The cavitation engine used in the present invention is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 9,995,479 and comprises an impact chamber having a heated impact surface, and a fluid injector having an outlet positioned to inject hyperbaric liquid water onto the impact surface of the impact chamber at supersonic velocities such that cavitation bubbles are present in the injected water. The outlet of the fluid injector and the impact surface are located relative to one another such that the outlet is spaced a distance from the impact surface of between 0.150 and 0.450 inches and the injected water hits the impact surface at an angle of between 85 and 95 degrees. Impact of the water with the impact surface the crushes the cavitation bubbles in the injected water to generate pressure above 1,000 pounds per square inch and produce superheated steam. The cavitation engine relies on electric power to generate the proper temperature and pressure. However, this power is substantially less than the fuel required for a traditional combustion boiler.
The steam generated by the cavitation engine is then fed through the pipes of the building's heating system to individual steam radiators, or is converted to hot water for feeding to hot water-fed radiators, depending on the building type. A condensate tank is connected to the feed, to collect condensate from the steam that is flowing through the pipe at the output of the cavitation engine. This condensate tank collects the condensate, which is then fed through an outlet pipe back to the cavitation engine via a pump. In one embodiment, the condensate is mixed with water from the initial water source in a mixing tank, and the mixed fluids are then pumped back into the cavitation engine via an additional pump for use in steam generation.
The system can be used with one, two or more cavitation engines, arranged in parallel or series, to generate sufficient steam to heat the structure.
The system can be combined with a municipal steam supply as well, to add additional heat to the building, and eliminate the need for further heat sources.
The system could also be used to supply hot water to the building. In this embodiment, the cavitation engines are directly connected to heat exchangers, which convert the steam to hot water, which is then stored in tanks for use by the building as needed. Water is also pumped back from the heat exchangers to the cavitation engines for re-use.
This design applies the cavitation engine to pre-existing components of a building's heating system, so that used in collaboration, the system will reduce the reliance on fossil fuels in large commercial office buildings and large residential multi-family buildings. Currently these buildings are predominantly designed to provide tenant/occupant comfort heating and domestic hot water creation utilizing boilers that burn natural gas or oil to generate hot water or steam.
Additionally, other buildings are connected to urban district steam distribution facilities which are also create steam for sale, and which is derived from fossil fuels such as natural gas and oil which the customer absorbs the carbon emission penalties by utilizing this non-electric energy source. The present invention reduces the carbon emissions of large commercial buildings and large residential multi-family buildings by creating steam or hot water efficiently through the utilization of hydrodynamic cavitation equipment powered electrically as a replacement for natural gas and oil dependent boilers, or urban district steam or hot water supply sources.
The system incorporates numerous components used for other applications independently. When collectively combined as a designed system for this specific application, the end result is a reduction of carbon emission for the consumer.
Other objects and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description considered in connection with the accompanying drawings. It is to be understood, however, that the drawings are designed as an illustration only and not as a definition of the limits of the invention.
In the drawings, wherein similar reference characters denote similar elements throughout the several views:
Referring now in detail to the drawings,
In the cavitation engine 100, injecting water in a manner that forms cavitation bubbles in the water and impacting the water to crush the cavitation bubbles generates very high pressure superheated steam that can be used to generate electricity or harnessed as an energy output. The feed water can be ambient temperature or heated, but is injected as a liquid.
Each impact chamber 102 is initially pre-heated to 375 degrees F. Once engine 100 is operating, the energy supplied for the pre-heating may be ceased, as it has been observed that the temperature of the impact chambers 102 will remain above 375 degrees F. due to the operation of the engine 100. For example, a thermocouple probe may be connected to a digital controller for providing the desired pre-heating.
Cavitation refers to the formation of vapor cavities in a liquid. The vapor cavities are characterized as small liquid-cavitation-free zones in the nature of bubbles or voids that are the consequence of cavitational forces acting upon the liquid. Cavitation occurs when a liquid is subjected to rapid changes of pressure that cause the formation of cavities where the pressure is relatively low. When subjected to higher pressure, as in the case of the cavitation engines according to the disclosure, it has been observed that the voids implode or are otherwise crushed and generate an intense shockwave and high pressure.
Thus, engine structures are configured to receive injected water and to promote cavitation of the injected water to generate very high pressure that can be used to generate electricity or otherwise harnessed as an energy output. The injector 130 injects water in a manner such that bubbles or voids are created in the stream of injected water, referred to herein as cavitation bubbles. When the injected water from injector 130 collides with the impact surface 102a of the impact chamber 102, a shock wave occurs that crushes the bubbles, and the water is instantly transformed into superheated steam. That is, the injector 130 operates to form cavitation bubbles in the water and cooperates with the impact surface 102a so that that cavitation bubbles in the injected water are crushed upon impact of the water with the impact surface 102a.
Thus, the cavitation engine operates by injecting liquid water in a manner that creates cavitation bubbles, and impacting the water onto an impact surface in a manner that rapidly crushes the cavitation bubbles upon impact. The injected water is desirably substantially saturated with cavitation bubbles. Crushing of the cavitation bubbles in this manner causes the temperature of the gases inside the bubbles to rapidly increase and raise the temperature of the surrounding water, which creates high pressure superheated steam.
The present invention takes this cavitation engine and incorporates it into a novel system for providing heat and hot water to a structure, such as an apartment building or office building, without requiring retrofitting of the existing pipes and radiators.
The system of the present invention can be used in many different configurations to supply heat, hot water or even electricity to a structure. The system uses only a small amount of electricity to generate large amounts of superheated steam which can efficiently heat a structure without the burning of large amounts of fossil fuels, and without the need to replace the building's existing pipes or radiators. The system of the present invention also provides for the re-use of the condensation that forms form the steam production, so no water is wasted in the process.
Accordingly, while only a few embodiments of the present invention have been shown and described, it is obvious that many changes and modifications may be made thereunto without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.
