Supercooling apparatus, refrigerator, and control method thereof

Abstract

A refrigerator for storing a beverage at an optimal temperature to stably supercool the beverage and maintain the beverage in a supercooled state, and that can rapidly produce a supercooled beverage while maintaining the supercooled state of the beverage. A supercooling apparatus of the refrigerator includes a storage to which chilled air is supplied from a chilled air supply unit, a supercooling compartment positioned in the storage and refrigerated by the chilled air to indirectly refrigerate an object therein, a hole formed at one side of the supercooling compartment to allow flow of the chilled air into and from the supercooling compartment, and a damper to open or close the hole. The object is directly or indirectly refrigerated in the supercooling compartment according to user's selection by opening or closing the damper.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application claims the benefit of Korean Patent Application No. 2006-0004205, filed on Jan. 14, 2006 in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] 1. Field of the Invention [0003] The present invention relates to a refrigeration compartment, a refrigerator including the same, and a control method thereof. More particularly, the present invention relates to a refrigerator including an independent refrigeration compartment which can supercool a beverage and maintain a supercooled state of the beverage, and a method for controlling the refrigerator such that a variation in temperature of the refrigeration compartment is minimized to maintain the supercooled state of the beverage. [0004] 2. Description of the Related Art [0005] With advances in refrigerator technology, requests for cool and tasty beverages has been initially satisfied by ice c...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015] Accordingly, it is an aspect of the present invention to provide a refrigerator, which can maintain a storage for a beverage at an optimal temperature to stably supercool the beverage and then maintain the beverage in a supercooled state, and which can rapidly produce a supercooled beverage while maintaining the supercooled state of the beverage after supercooling the beverage, and a control method thereof.

[0035] In accordance with yet another aspect of the present invention, a refrigerator is provided, including: a body having a freezing compartment defined therein; a storage defined independently of the freezing compartment in the body; a chilled air supply unit to supply chilled air from the freezing compartment to the storage; a supercooling compartment positioned in the storage, and refrigerated by the chilled air supplied from the chilled air supply unit to indirectly refrigerate an object therein; a temperature sensor positioned inside the supercooling compartment to detect an inner temperature of the supercooling compartment; and a controller to control the chilled air supply unit based on a temperature information provided by the temperature sensor, wherein the refrigerator maintains a supercooled state of the object by reducing a range of temperature variation within the supercooling compartment via control of the chilled air supplied from the chilled air supply unit.

Problems solved by technology

However, such a slush beverage is insufficient to satisfy demands of a user due to a problem in that such a slush beverage is inconvenient to have due to a large size of ice particles, and tends to change in its flavor due to dilution of the beverage as time passes.

When the water is in the supercooled state, it is relatively unstable since the water has a higher free energy than water in the solid state.

As a result, it is very difficult to maintain the beverage in the supercooled state.

In the point of view as described above, it is very difficult for the conventional refrigerator to produce a slush beverage by supercooling the beverage.

Specifically, every beverage has its own supercooling degree different from others due to a different content thereof, and thus it is difficult to maintain every beverage in a supercooling state.

Furthermore, even if supercooling degrees of all beverages were provided, it is very difficult to maintain a supercooled state of a certain beverage having a low supercooling degree since the conventional refrigerator undergoes temperature variation in a significantly wide range due to non-uniform circulation of chilled air therein.

In addition, if the beverage could be maintained in the supercooled state, since it takes a long period of time to supercool the beverage for producing the slush beverage, a user must wait a very long time to have the slush beverage.

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