Low Mixing Ventilation Jet

Abstract

A ventilation system with hardware to direct two independent airflows, wherein an outer airflow (at least partially) surrounds the an inner airflow. Preferably the inner and outer airflows come from different sources such that the air of the inner airflow has higher associated costs than the air of the outer airflow. For example, the inner airflow may be more cleaned and/or more thermally conditioned than the outer airflow. The inner airflow may have a different velocity than the outer airflow. Preferably, the ventilation system is a PVD, but other applications are also contemplated, such as: (i) spot-cooling; (ii) air curtains (for example for a refrigerated food section or case in a market); (iii) medical devices (for example, oxygen supply devices, “blankets” of thermally conditioned and/or cleaned air for infants, patients in surgery or burn victims, shields of cleaned air for protection against microbes for patients with compromised immune systems); (iv) personal humidifiers; (v) personal dehumidifiers; (vi) thermal and/or humidity control for plant or animal enclosures; and/or (vii) any other ventilation system for controlling at least one type of air characteristic (see Definitions section).

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]1. Field of the Invention[0002]The present invention relates to ventilation systems and more particularly to ventilation systems for providing cleaned air (see Definitions section), thermally conditioned air (see Definitions section) and / or humidity-controlled air to a particular zone.[0003]2. Description of the Related Art[0004]It is often desirable to provide cleaned, thermally conditioned and / or humidity controlled air to a particular zone. As one example of this, research indicates that providing building occupants with devices to control the flow of air in their immediate environments to their personal preferences can enhance their satisfaction and work performance. A couple examples of such research are set forth in: (i) Arens, E., T. Xu, K. Miura, Z. Hui, M. Fountain, and F. Bauman (1998), “A study of occupant cooling by personally controlled air movement”, Energy and Buildings, vol. 27, pp. 45-49 (1998); (ii) Melikov, A. K., R. Cermak and M. ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015]The present invention relates to ventilation (see Definitions section) nozzles and new applications for ventilation nozzles. The ventilation nozzles of the present invention provide (at least) two airflows wherein on outer airflow (at least partially) surrounds an inner airflow. Preferably, the outer airflow has different temperature, humidity and / or cleaned air (see Definitions section) than the inner airflow, and is therefore less expensive to produce than the inner airflow. The outer airflow decreases the degree of jet mixing and entrainment of the inner airflow.

Problems solved by technology

This large volumetric flow has commensurately large energy costs associated with: (i) thermal conditioning; (ii) filtering / cleaning and / or (iii) moving the air.

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