Rheem Manufacturing Company

Other

Field Controls, LLC

Ashwin Rao

Jozef Boros

Piyush Porwal

Jason Hall

Hector J Donastorg

Cory Allan Weiss

Sina Jasteh

Gregory M Aronov

Marat V Garafutdinov

Nathan Rivard

Troy E Trant

Timothy D Scott

William Jason Hall

Matthew S Park

William T McLemore

Subbramanian Thenappan

David L Gibbons

Brad Windon

Brian Shaw

Ronnie Eaton

The disclosed technology includes a combustion system providing ease of access to components of the combustion system and optimal placement of a burner such that efficient combustion and heat transfer can occur. The combustion system can include an inner tube having a first end and a second end, the second end having a flange with a sensor port, and an outer tube having a first end and a second end. The inner tube can be disposed within the outer tube. The inner tube can have an outer diameter less than an inner diameter of the outer tube, creating a gap between the outer tube and inner tube. An ignitor assembly and a flame sensor assembly can extend through the sensor port and the gap and be positioned proximate a burner.

Combustion systems with ease of serviceability

Disclosed herein is a water heating system including a water heater having a tank, and a first temperature sensor disposed toward a top end of the tank to measure a first temperature and a second temperature sensor disposed toward a bottom end of the tank to measure a second temperature. The water heating system can further include a controller communicably coupled to the first temperature sensor and the second temperature sensor, where the controller determines an amount of heated water in the tank based on one or more algorithms and measurements made by the first and second temperature sensors.

Real-time heated water supply measurement systems for water heaters and methods thereto

The disclosed technology includes carryover burner systems and methods for use with water heating system. The water heating system can include a burner unit having an outer sleeve, and an inner sleeve. The water heating system can also include an ignitor. The outer sleeve can include a carryover region having a first plurality of apertures and a combustion region which can be adjacent to the carryover region, the combustion region including a second plurality of apertures. The inner sleeve can comprise a dispersion region having a third plurality of apertures. The inner sleeve can be located substantially within the outer sleeve.

Carryover burners for fluid heating systems and methods thereof

A conduit fitting for an exhaust duct includes a conduit and a condensate trap. The conduit fitting defines an interior space partitioned into an upper conduit and a lower condensate reservoir. The condensate reservoir can be configured to contain a neutralizing agent for neutralizing acidic condensate prior to it exiting the reservoir.

Conduit fitting with integrated condensate trap

A combustion tube assembly of a water heater includes a combustion tube having an open end, a closed end, and an outflow opening between the open end and the closed end. A cavity of the combustion tube provides a chamber for a combustion of a water heater fuel, where the outflow opening provides an outlet for an exhaust gas resulting from the combustion of the water heater fuel to exit the combustion tube. The combustion tube assembly further includes a spring positioned in the cavity of the combustion tube at the closed end of the combustion tube.

Combustion tube assembly of a water heater

A combustion tube assembly of a water heater includes a combustion tube having an open end, a closed end, and an outflow opening located between the open end and the closed end. A cavity of the combustion tube provides a chamber for a combustion of a water heater fuel that produces an exhaust gas that flows down toward the closed end. The combustion tube assembly further includes a diverter structure positioned inside the combustion tube to divert the exhaust gas such that the exhaust gas flows toward the closed end on a first side of the diverter structure and flows from the first side of the diverter structure to the second side of the diverter structure through a flow opening proximal to the closed end. The outflow opening provides an outlet for the exhaust gas that flows to the second side of the diverter structure to exit the combustion tube.

A motor/damper assembly installable on the top end of a fuel-fired water heater includes a support plate structure upon which a flue collar with a pivotally supported flue damper, a drive motor, and a drive shaft interconnecting the motor damper are mounted. The assembly is installed by placing the collar over the upper end of the water heater flue, securing the support plate structure to the top end of the water heater, and positioning a top cover housing on the support plate structure. Using the assembly provides improved support rigidity and alignment for the motor and shaft relative to the damper, improved repeatable precise manufacturing placement of the motor and shaft, improved construction aesthetics, with the cover also protecting the shaft from shipping and handling damages.

Motor/damper assembly for fuel-fired water heater

The disclosure describe a system and method for detecting one or more segments of desired speech utterances from an audio stream using timings of events from other modes that are correlated to the timings of the desired segments of speech. The redundant information from other modes results in a highly accurate and robust utterance detection.

System and method for multimodal utterance detection

The disclosure describes an overall system/method for developing a 'speak and touch auto correction interface' referred to as STACI which is far more superior to existing user interfaces including the widely adopted qwerty. Using STACI a user speaks and types a word at the same time. The redundant information from the two modes, namely speech and the letters typed, enables the user to sloppily and partially type the words. The result is a very fast and accurate enhanced keyboard interface enabling document production on computing devices like phones and tablets.

Speak and touch auto correction interface

A tube disposed in the combustion chamber of a standing pilot type fuel-fired water heater is used to increase the overall efficiency of the water heater by improving the heat transfer from the pilot flame to the tank during standby periods by funneling the standing pilot flame upwardly through the tube in a manner concentrating the pilot flame heat against an underside portion of the bottom head of the water heater tank. To further increase water heater efficiency, the pilot burner is of a dual input type. Various pilot burner operational algorithm modes are disclosed for causing the pilot burner to operate at a high firing rate during main burner operation, and at a low firing rate during standby periods.

Pilot burner system for water heaters

The disclosure describes a speech detection system for detecting one or more desired speech segments in an audio stream. The speech detection system includes an audio stream input and a speech detection technique. The speech detection technique may be performed in various ways, such as using pattern matching and/or signal processing. The pattern matching implementation may extract features representing types of sounds as in phrases, words, syllables, phonemes and so on. The signal processing implementation may extract spectrally-localized frequency-based features, amplitude-based features, and combinations of the frequency-based and amplitude-based features. Metrics may be obtained and used to determine a desired word in the audio stream. In addition, a keypad stream having keypad entries may be used in determining the desired word.

Detecting segments of speech from an audio stream

The disclosure describes an overall system/method for text-input using a multimodal interface with a combination of speech recognition and text prediction. Specifically, an 'always listening' mode for entering words is combined with a push-to-speak mode for entering symbols and phrases. In addition, these two modes are further combined with keypad based text prediction. Finally, the overall user-interface of the proposed system is designed such that it enhances existing standard text-input methods; thereby minimizing the behavior change for mobile users.

Multimodal interface for input of text

The disclosure describes an overall system/method for text-input using a multimodal interface with speech recognition. Specifically, pluralities of modes interact with the main speech mode to provide the speech-recognition system with partial knowledge of the text corresponding to the spoken utterance forming the input to the speech recognition system. The knowledge from other modes is used to dynamically change the ASR system's active vocabulary thereby significantly increasing recognition accuracy and significantly reducing processing requirements. Additionally, the speech recognition system is configured using three different system configurations (always listening, partially listening, and push-to-speak) and for each one of those three different user-interfaces are proposed (speak-and-type, type-and-speak, and speak-while-typing). Finally, the overall user-interface of the proposed system is designed such that it enhances existing standard text-input methods; thereby minimizing the behavior change for mobile users.

Growing community of inventors

Montgomery, AL, United States of America

Ashwin Rao