The Cornelius Company

Duncan T Lasley

Forrest L Austin

A beverage dispensing valve for pre-mix carbonated beverage has a pressure balancing structure for enabling easy opening of the valve and an improved drive mechanism providing a relatively higher force for opening the valve; the balancing structure has a balance piston on a nose of a normally closed poppet valve, the piston is on a floppy mount and is sealed to a balance cylinder in the pressurized beverage line forming a balance chamber upstream of the piston, the chamber is vented to atmosphere to relieve beverage pressure on most of the area of the poppet valve to reduce the opening force required; the drive mechanism includes an electric solenoid having an elastic tension spring in the solenoid plunger, the spring elastically connects the plunger to the poppet valve to generate an improved and greater force. A dispensing system has several of these valves with a single low power transformer for all of the valves. A method of dispensing pre-mix carbonated beverage has the new steps of balancing the beverage pressure upon the upstream side of a poppet valve so that it is relatively easy to open the valve, and elastically applying an opening force upon the poppet valve to pop it open when the elastic force exceeds the required opening force.

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Hennepin Cty., MN, United States of America

Duncan T Lasley