Preservative Dosing Pump Venting for Stable Beverage Flow
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing dosing pumps for beverages sensitively react to outgassing media, leading to dosing fluctuations and potential functional failures, especially when using preservatives like dialkyl dicarbonates.
Innovation Solution
An apparatus with a measuring device to determine flow rate, a pump device for preservatives, and a venting device with a controlled valve to manage gas bubbles, ensuring accurate and reliable dosing by cyclically venting the pump.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If dialkyl dicarbonate is dosed into the beverage line, then preservative effect is achieved, but gas bubbles form in the pump device causing dosing fluctuations
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and removes gas bubbles from the pump device using a separate vent line that connects the pump chamber to the atmosphere or a collection system. This allows the harmful gas phase to be separated from the liquid preservative dosing stream, preventing dosing fluctuations while maintaining continuous preservative delivery.
Solution Approach 2:
The pump device is segmented into separate functional zones: a dosing chamber for preservative delivery and a venting chamber for gas bubble removal. The vent line creates a separate pathway that divides the gas removal function from the liquid dosing function, allowing each to operate independently without interfering with the other.
2Reliability
If preservative dosing is performed, then beverage preservation is achieved, but functional failures occur due to sensitive reaction to outgassing media
Solution Approach 1:
The vent line acts as an intermediary pathway that mediates between the pump chamber and the external environment. It provides a controlled interface for gas bubble escape while preventing direct contact between outgassing media and the pump's sensitive dosing mechanisms, thereby maintaining pump functionality during preservative dosing operations.
3Measurement precision
If on-line diaphragm dosing pumps are used, then dosing accuracy is improved, but device complexity increases due to enclosed pumping chamber requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the venting function with the existing pump structure by integrating a vent line into the pump housing. This combines gas bubble removal capability with the enclosed diaphragm pump design, maintaining dosing accuracy while avoiding the need for completely separate venting equipment or complex modifications to the pump architecture.
Data Source
AI summary
A device for preserving beverages with a measuring device, is provided which is suitable and intended to determine a flow rate of a liquid flowing through a beverage line, and with a pump device which conveys a preservative, in particular dialkyl dicarbonate, into the beverage line, into the beverage line, the pump device being controllable as a function of a flow rate determined by the measuring device, the device having a venting device for venting the pump device, wherein the venting device has a valve device.