The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 06, 1979
Filed:
Mar. 16, 1978
Norman F Bradshaw, Richmond, GB;
Schweitzer Industrial Corporation, Madison Heights, MI (US);
Abstract
An energy recovery system for industrial plants or similar installations providing for recovery and utilization of heat from relatively low temperature waste heat sources. The system includes refrigeration units operated as heat pumps to absorb the recovered heat from each of the sources in the evaporator and transfer heat to heat-using processes from the condenser. The heat transfer media circulated from and to the evaporator and condenser are accumulated in thermal storage tanks which allow for maintenance of temperature gradations in the media to allow control of the condenser operating temperature and in order to recover the maximum thermal energy from the media received from various recovery heat exchanger units. Various arrangements for maintaining and utilizing the thermal temperature gradations in the storage tanks include vertically offset inlets and outlets or vertically extending movable probes with the media withdrawn and introduced at various levels therethrough and thermal stratification creating the temperature differences. The storage tanks are alternately provided with weirs to form horizontally spaced compartments each having heat transfer liquids at varying temperatures in the respective compartments. In one embodiment, a plurality of heat pump units are arranged in cascade relationship with a plurality of thermal storage tanks receiving circulated media flow about successive condenser and evaporators in the cascade to maximize heat pump efficiency.