Device comprising cooker hood and air conditioner

Abstract

The subject of the invention is a device comprising a kitchen hood having a hood section (14) with a hood vapour inlet (15) and a vapour outlet duct (21) provided with a duct fan (18), to be connected to the ventilation duct (1) of a building via an opening in the wall (2) of the building. The device is characterized in that it comprises an air conditioner integrally connected to the hood, the air conditioner having air conditioner housing (4) having inlet (5) and outlet (22) of air from / to the room, and also, contained in the air conditioner housing (4): a refrigerant cooling system comprising a condenser (6), an air-conditioning fan (7) of the condenser (6), an expansion valve (8), a compressor (9), an evaporator (11) and an outlet fan (10) of the evaporator (11), as well as a duct (3) for removing waste heat from the air-conditioner (4), to be connected to the ventilation duct (1) of the building via an opening in the wall (2) of the building, the air conditioner having a condensate drain (12) from the evaporator (11) and separated from the hood by a wall (20).

Description

[0001] Device comprising cooker hood and air conditioner

[0002] The subject of the invention is a device comprising a cooker hood having a hood section with a vapour inlet and a vapour outlet duct provided with a duct fan, to be connected to the building ventilation duct via an opening in the building wall.

[0003] The air conditioner market in general still lacks many technical solutions related to the functioning of air conditioners.

[0004] Today's and most popular air conditioners usually consist of two main components, an outdoor unit (condenser - gives off heat to the atmosphere from the refrigeration system) located outside the building and an indoor unit (evaporator) located inside the building, which cools the air in the room in which it is located. Such an air-conditioner, consisting of two main parts (indoor unit - evaporator and outdoor unit - condenser), is connected by copper tubes - pipes - through which the refrigerant travels, and the copper tubes themselves usually pass through the outer wall of the building. Unfortunately, such an air conditioner cannot be installed anywhere, as not every flat has, for example, a balcony or permission from the property owner to install the outdoor unit on the outside wall of the apartment building. A resident of an apartment block is simply excluded from using such an air conditioner, consisting of two separate units.

[0005] This means that as hot periods come along, which become longer and longer, the flat is difficult to be cooled down to allow living in comfort. High ambient temperatures often cause fainting, strokes and can even lead to death.

[0006] There are also portable air-conditioners that have a compact design, i.e. the condenser and evaporator, as well as the cooling system, are in one solid body, and the waste heat is transferred via a special flexible pipe to the outside of the room being cooled. Such an air conditioner is not very practical, as neither the external doors of the flat nor the windows have openings suitable for the insertion of a pipe to discharge waste heat into the atmosphere, and opening a door or window wide will cause the waste heat pushed out by the pipe to return to the room that is to be cooled. Such a portable air conditioner with a pipe for waste heat is not practical and has technical limitations and architectural limitations of the apartment building in the form of lack of suitable openings in doors or windows. Demand for these types of air conditioners is negligible, due to their disadvantages.

[0007] The present invention regards a device comprising a cooker hood having a hood section with a hood vapour inlet and a vapour outlet duct provided with a duct fan, to be connected to the building ventilation duct via an opening in the building wall. The unit is characterised in that it comprises an air conditioner integrally connected to the hood, the air conditioner having an air conditioner housing having an air inlet and outlet to / from the room, and also, contained within the air conditioner housing:• a refrigerant cooling system comprising a condenser, an air conditioner fan of the condenser, an expansion valve, a compressor, an evaporator and an outlet fan of the evaporator, and

[0008] • a waste heat duct from the air conditioner, to be connected to the building ventilation duct via an opening in the building wall,

[0009] wherein the air conditioner has condensate drain from the evaporator and is separated from the hood by a wall.

[0010] Preferably, the outlet duct and the duct have a common outlet for connecting to the building ventilation duct via a single opening in the building wall.

[0011] Preferably, the outlet duct and duct are separate, to for connecting to the building ventilation duct via two separate openings in the building wall.

[0012] Preferably, the condensate drainage from the evaporator is a container attached to the air conditioner in a detachable manner.

[0013] Preferably, the hood inlet is provided with a filter.

[0014] The device according to the present invention is an addition to the market and a solution for greater access to air conditioners for all homeowners.

[0015] The unit can be installed in almost any apartment regardless of its size, and its most important new feature is the possibility of using the building's ventilation duct, through which waste heat, which is always generated by the operation of any air conditioner, can be directly discharged. This could be a kitchen ventilation duct. The device can be easily hung on the wall in place of the kitchen hood. Such a device, when the need arises, can serve as an air conditioner, heater and / or cooker hood.

[0016] The advantage of the device is that it is not necessary to install an external unit (condenser) and make holes in the external walls to connect the external unit to the internal unit (evaporator) with copper pipes.

[0017] With a portable air conditioner, on the other hand, the problem of removing waste heat through a special flexible pipe through a window or door, which often do not have these openings, is eliminated. In the device according to the invention, it is also possible to extract cooking vapours into the ventilation duct, which contributes to a reduction in the cost of the equipment, as many components will serve simultaneously to cool and heat the air and extract cooking vapours, and to a reduction in the amount of space required for installation, as the housing of the entire device will be placed in the place of the kitchen hood. Also, the ventilation duct itself will be able to be used for both removal of cooking vapours and waste heat from the air conditioner.

[0018] In addition, the ventilation duct itself gravitationally supports the reception of heat from the condenser in the device according to the invention, resulting in lower consumption of electricity needed to cool the refrigerant in the condenser and better efficiency of the condenser itself compared to those placedoutside buildings. Often the outdoor units of air conditioners are placed in sunny locations where the ambient temperature is higher than the temperature of the refrigerant in the condenser, which causes the outdoor condensers of air conditioners to poorly cool (the condenser fan uses air at ambient temperature) the refrigerant, the refrigerant has to be refilled more often (it evaporates faster in the system), more energy is consumed by both the condenser fan and the compressor, which ultimately makes such an air conditioner less efficient than the device according to the invention. It can also often happen that such an air conditioner with a condenser placed outside the building stops working due to the ambient temperature being too high.

[0019] A wall-mounted air conditioner with a hood function can fill a gap in the current air conditioner market by the fact that many apartments do not have balconies or other options to install an outdoor air conditioner unit, leaving many families without the ability to live comfortably and regulate their own body temperature, resulting in more and more fainting and mortality in the summer due to the inability to cool the apartment, as the barriers are often architectural and technical barriers of the air conditioner itself.

[0020] The device according to the invention meets these technical and architectural problems, as it can be installed in almost any apartment, as almost every apartment has a ventilation duct and a kitchen with a hood. A traditional cooker hood does not have a function of cooling and heating the air, a function that the device according to the invention has.

[0021] The ventilation duct itself in buildings during very hot periods keeps the temperature constant and much lower than the ambient temperature, e.g. on balconies, so that the condenser of the air conditioner in the device is not subjected to ambient or direct sunlight.

[0022] The subject of the invention is explained in the embodiments in the drawing, in which fig. 1 shows schematically an embodiment of the device according to the invention, fig. 2 shows schematically another embodiment of such a device, fig. 3 shows schematically an example of interior arrangement and location of the device according to the invention.

[0023] Fig. 1 and fig. 2 show embodiment of the device according to the invention. It can be seen that the device comprises a cooker hood having a hood section 14 with a hood vapour inlet 15 and a vapour outlet duct 21 provided with a duct fan 18, the outlet duct 21 being connected to the ventilation duct 1 of the building via an opening in the wall 2 of the building. The device also comprises an air conditioner connected integrally with the hood. The air conditioner has an air conditioner housing 4 having an inlet 5 and an outlet 22 of air from / to the room, and the air conditioner housing 4 includes a refrigerant cooling system comprising a condenser 6, an air conditioner fan 7 of the condenser 6, an expansion valve 8, a compressor 9, an evaporator 11 and an outlet fan 10 of the evaporator 11, as well as a duct 3 for removing waste heat from the air conditioner, which duct 3 is connected to theventilation duct 1 of the building via the opening in the wall 2 of the building. The air conditioner has a condensate drain 12 from the evaporator 11 and is separated from the hood by a wall 20.

[0024] In the embodiment shown in Fig. 1, outlet duct 21 of the hood and the duct 3 of the air conditioner that discharges heat have a common outlet and are connected to the ventilation duct 1 of the building via a single opening in the wall 2 of the building. A common outlet can be implemented in various variants that will be obvious to a person skilled in the art, e.g. the ducts may only have a common end or they may merge downstream so that the final section is common. This example is preferable from the point of view of existing solutions, i.e. it does not require an additional hole in the wall 2.

[0025] In contrast, in the embodiment shown in Fig. 2, exhaust duct 21 of the hood and the exhaust duct 3 of the air conditioner are separate and each is connected to the ventilation duct 1 of the building via a different opening in the wall 2 of the building. This example is preferable if the transfer of contaminants from the hood to the air conditioner is to be avoided, which can happen with poorly functioning ventilation.

[0026] In the examples shown, the condensate drain 12 is made as a container that is attached to the air conditioner either externally or internally, in such a way that it can be disconnected (to empty the container). However, a person skilled in the art will note that drain 12 can take a different form - e.g., if the device is located adjacent to a sewer, it may be a pipe discharged into a sewerage or into a drain in the sink.

[0027] In the examples shown, the hood inlet 15 is provided with a filter, but the filter may also be located elsewhere in the hood or may be absent.

[0028] The device according to the embodiments is mounted with brackets / mounts 19 above the lower kitchen cabinet 17 with the hob 16 for cooking. The lower cabinet can also be an oven, for example, which is usually the case in kitchen areas.

[0029] The device can have a control panel 13 or it can be equipped with a connectivity module (for example IR, BT or WiFi) to control via a remote control or an app on another device (phone, tablet, IOT control panel, etc.).

[0030] Fig. 3 shows an example interior arrangement with kitchen cabinets, including a lower kitchen cabinet 17 with a hob 16 above which the device according to the invention is mounted.

[0031] Of course, the invention is not limited to the embodiments described above, and the features indicated in the claims can be combined in any combination appropriate to the particular application of the solution.

Claims

Claims1. A device comprising a cooker hood having a hood section (14) with a hood vapour inlet (15) and a vapour outlet duct (21) provided with a duct fan (18), to be connected to the ventilation duct (1) of the building via an opening in the wall (2) of the building, characterised in that it comprises an air conditioner integrally connected to the hood, the air conditioner having an air conditioner housing (4) having an inlet (5) and an outlet (22) of air from / to the room and also, contained within the air conditioner housing (4):• a refrigerant cooling system comprising a condenser (6), an air conditioning fan (7) of the condenser (6), an expansion valve (8), a compressor (9), an evaporator (11) and an outlet fan (10) of the evaporator (11), and• a duct (3) that removes waste heat from the air conditioner (4), to be connected to the ventilation duct (1) of the building via an opening in the wall (2) of the building, wherein the air conditioner has a condensate drain (12) from the evaporator (11) and is separated from the hood by a wall (20).

2. The device according to claim 1, characterised in that the outlet duct (21) and the duct (3) have a common outlet for connection to the ventilation duct (1) of the building via a single opening in the wall (2) of the building.

3. The device according to claim 1, characterised in that the outlet duct (21) and duct (3) are separate, to be connected to the ventilation duct (1) of the building via two, separate openings in the wall (2) of the building.

4. The device according to claim 1, characterised in that the condensate drain (12) from the evaporator (11) is a container attached to the air conditioner in a detachable manner.

5. The device according to claim 1, characterised in that the hood inlet (15) is provided with a filter.

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