JPS649553B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a cold storage device, and in particular to a cold storage device that consumes very little power for operation relative to the amount of stored cold heat by storing natural cold heat in the form of ice. It is.

It is certain that fossil energy will be depleted in the near future, but on the other hand, as living standards improve, the need for cooling and heating to maintain a comfortable working and living environment in the summer is steadily increasing. The demand for electricity for commercial purposes is becoming very large, which not only increases the amount of energy consumed;
Seasonal and temporal fluctuations in electricity demand have become extremely large, causing a decline in the average operating rate of power generation facilities, which has become a major problem.

Therefore, the present invention has been made with the aim of reducing the electrical energy required to produce cold energy and reducing fluctuations in power demand by efficiently utilizing natural cold energy.

That is, the cold storage device of the present invention collects the cold heat of the winter atmosphere using a heat exchanger that circulates antifreeze as a refrigerant, uses the collected cold heat to produce ice, and stores the produced ice in an insulated cold storage tank. It is stored by falling by gravity,
It is characterized by the fact that it can extract and use cold or heat when it is needed.

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a system diagram of a cold storage device in Embodiment 1 of the present invention.

First, when the temperature of the outside air drops below zero degrees to the point at which ice is formed, the pump 12 is operated to pass between the heat exchanger 13 with fins and the ice maker 11 which does not have a refrigerator. Therefore, the antifreeze liquid is circulated as a refrigerant, and the coolant from the outside air is taken in to cool the refrigerant.

The temperature of the refrigerant has dropped sufficiently, and the ice maker 11 produces 10 ice cubes.
When the temperature reaches a temperature at which ice can be produced, the pump 6 is operated to supply water to the ice maker 11.

The ice maker 11 uses the collected cold energy to drive the pump 6.
Ice 10 is produced by freezing the water supplied by the system, and the ice 2 is stored by dropping it one after another by gravity into an insulated cold storage tank 1.

Some of the ice 2 melts in the cold storage tank 1 and becomes water, so a grid 3 is placed inside the tank to separate the ice 2 and water, and the water is supplied to the ice maker 11 again by opening the valve 4 and using the pump 6. to produce ice 10.

The water for making ice is the melted water in the cold storage tank 1, or when it is insufficient, the water supplied from outside by opening the valve 5 is used.

When cold heat is required in the summer, the valve 9 at the outlet of the heat exchanger 7 is closed, the valve 8 is opened, and the pump 6 is operated to circulate cold water and supply cold heat from the heat exchanger 7 to the outside. and use it.

When this cold storage device is performing cold storage operation in winter, the heat exchanger 7 is bypassed or the flow on the secondary side is stopped to prevent cold heat from flowing outside.

In the case of Example 1, ice is made while the refrigerant is at a sufficiently low temperature to be able to produce ice 10, and since the temperature rises considerably during the day even in winter, the cold storage device is It will be operated intermittently.

Next, FIG. 2 is a system diagram of a cold storage device according to a second embodiment of the present invention, and the same parts as in FIG. 1 are indicated by the same part numbers.

In the case of the second embodiment, the cold heat collected by operating the pump 12 is temporarily stored in the temperature stratified type cold storage tank 14 using antifreeze as a cold storage medium, and the stored cold heat is transferred to the pump 15 in the same way as in the first embodiment. Therefore, ice 10 is produced by supplying ice to an ice making machine 11 that utilizes natural cooling energy, and other parts are the same as in the first embodiment.

As a result, if cold heat can be sufficiently supplied to the ice maker 11, the ice maker 11 can be operated during the day, and the operating rate of the cold storage device is improved.

However, compared to Example 1, since the number of pumps 15 is increased by one, the pump power increases, although only slightly.

Of course, these embodiments 1 and 2 are just examples of the present invention, and the heat exchanger 7 for extracting the stored cold heat to the outside may be a separate pipe from the line for cold storage operation.

Further, as the heat exchanger 7 that transfers the cold heat of the atmosphere to the refrigerant, a heat pipe type one may be used, for example.

Further, the ice 10 to be produced may be in any shape such as flakes or cubes, and various application examples other than the above-mentioned Examples 1 and 2 can be considered.

Therefore, if the present invention is used, it is extremely easy to produce and store 12 tons of ice in one winter;
Approximately 10×10 ⁵ Kcal of cold energy can be stored by ice.
Ice is a poor conductor of heat and has a high density of cold storage, so if you take care to insulate the cold storage tank, you can store most of it into the summer.

Further, since the operating power required to operate this cold storage device is only a few percent of the amount of cold storage heat, the operating cost is also relatively low.

By the way, in many regions of Japan, the cold storage device described in Example 1 in Figure 1 does not use a refrigerator, but uses only the cold heat of the atmosphere, and only the pump power and the power to scrape off frozen ice are used. Although it is possible to store cold, in warm regions, the temperature becomes quite low in winter, but the period of low temperature is too short to produce ice using natural cooling alone, or regions where the temperature reaches close to zero but is not enough to produce ice. There is also.

Therefore, in order to apply it to such areas, it is possible to use the ice making machine 11 described in the first embodiment and the second embodiment that has some refrigeration function.

A refrigerator that produces ice cools water from the environmental temperature in which it is placed to the temperature that produces ice and freezes it, so the more cold energy that is close to the freezing temperature, the less power the refrigerator requires. .

In addition, in the cold storage device described in Example 2, since the frozen ice maker is cooled by the cooled and stored antifreeze, the power consumption of the frozen ice maker is negligible and it is possible to produce a large amount of ice. can.

If the ice maker 11 has some refrigeration function, some refrigeration power will be added, but the power consumption will be significantly lower than in the normal method.

Therefore, with the cold storage device of the present invention, almost all of the cold energy can be supplied by atmospheric cold energy,
In addition, fluctuations in power demand can be significantly reduced, resulting in a large energy-saving effect, and peaks in the demand for refrigerated power are almost eliminated, so the operating rate of power generation equipment is averaged, resulting in large economic and industrial benefits.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a system diagram of a cold storage device according to a first embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a system diagram of a cold storage device according to a second embodiment of the present invention. 1... Cold storage tank, 2, 10... Ice, 7... Heat exchanger, 11... Ice maker, 13... Heat exchanger, 14...
...Temperature stratification type cold storage tank.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. Cold energy from the atmosphere is collected through a heat exchanger that circulates antifreeze as a refrigerant, the collected cold energy is used to produce ice, and the produced ice is allowed to fall by gravity into an insulated cold storage tank and stored. A cold storage device characterized in that it can be taken out and used when needed.