refrigerator
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing ice makers struggle to produce transparent ice with uniform transparency and maintain ice making speed within a predetermined range, often resulting in opaque ice due to incomplete bubble removal and uneven solidification rates.
Innovation Solution
A refrigerator system with a controller that adjusts the supply of cold, water, mechanical energy, and electrical energy to the ice making cell through a first and second tray, a heater, and temperature sensors to control the ice making process, ensuring uniform transparency and maintaining ice making speed by managing bubble movement and supercooling.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If water is cooled rapidly to increase ice making speed, then productivity is improved, but the ice becomes opaque due to incomplete bubble removal and uneven solidification
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-cooling the ice making cell before water supply, controlling the initial solidification layer formation, and pre-positioning the heater to ensure uniform heat distribution during subsequent ice making, thereby achieving both high speed and uniform transparency
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses temperature sensors to continuously monitor the ice making process and provides feedback to the controller, which adjusts the heater operation and water supply in real-time to maintain uniform solidification rate and bubble removal, ensuring both productivity and transparency quality
2Manufacturing precision
If a heater is used to promote convection and make transparent ice, then ice transparency is improved, but the ice making speed decreases due to increased heating requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The heater is positioned to provide localized heating at specific regions of the ice making cell where convection is most needed, rather than uniform heating throughout, thereby promoting bubble removal and transparency while minimizing overall heat input and maintaining ice making speed
Solution Approach 2:
The heater operates periodically rather than continuously, with controlled on/off cycles that promote convection and bubble removal during heating phases while allowing rapid solidification during cooling phases, thus achieving transparency without significantly reducing overall ice making speed
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The system effectively produces transparent ice with uniform transparency by controlling energy and temperature dynamics, reducing supercooling, and maintaining ice making speed, thereby enhancing user convenience and efficiency.
Implementation Method 1
a cooler supplying cold to the ice making cell
Implementation Method 2
a heater disposed adjacent to the tray assembly. The controller may control the heater to be turned on in at least some section while the cooler supplies cold so that bubbles dissolved in the water inside the ice making cell move from an ice-generating portion to liquid water
Implementation Method 3
the heating amount of heater to increase in a case in which the heat transfer amount between the cold for cooling the ice making cell and water of the ice making cell increases
Data Source
Figure 1(a)~1(b)
Figure 2~3
Figure 4
AI summary
A refrigerator according to the present disclosure includes a storage chamber configured to store food, a cooler configured to supply cold to the storage chamber, a first temperature sensor configured to sense the temperature in the storage chamber, a first tray configured to form a portion of an ice making cell that is a space in which water is phase-changed into ice by the cold, a second tray configured to form another portion of the ice making cell, a water supply part configured to supply water to the ice making cell, a second temperature sensor configured to sense the temperature of water or ice in the ice making cell, a heater configured to be positioned adjacent to at least one of the first tray and the second tray, and a controller configured to control the heater, in which the controller controls the degree of supercooling of water to be reduced in at least one or more of a first section from the completion of a preparation step for water supply until the start of the water supply, a second section from the start of the water supply until the completion of the water supply, and a third sections from the start of the ice making process before the ice making process is completed.