EP4374838A1

EP4374838A1 - Atmosphere conditioner with pressure control

Info

Publication number: EP4374838A1
Application number: EP22020580.1A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Horia-Nicolai Teodorescu
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 2022-11-28
Filing date: 2022-11-28
Publication date: 2024-05-29

Abstract

The invention discloses a multifunctional, essentially portable system for the control of pressure, air purity, and humidity in a closed space such as a home room, where the control is applied mainly when the outside atmosphere varies in pressure and humidity. The disclosed device ensures the control of the pressure such that it does not decreases or increase beyond certain limits related to the normal values at the specified altitude, moreover possibly maintaining the humidity between specified limits. Such controlled spaces may be useful for meteoropaths, who need to be protected against the atmospheric variations that may produce pain or other forms of manifestation of meteoropathies.

Description

I. THE FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention refers to control systems for the atmosphere conditioning of a pressurized room, namely for maintaining a stable pressure in a range of optimal values and for ensuring purified air in the respective room, as well as methods of implementation and use of these systems.
The invention pertains to the fields of environment control of closed spaces and of health devices, specifically to the domain of air conditioners.

II. DISCUSSION OF THE STATE OF THE ART

There are various systems for purifying air inside a room or sending purified air in the rooms; some of these commercial devices may also be able to heat or humidify the air. None of these systems is able to maintain a specified absolute pressure or a specified differential pressure in the room, compared to other rooms. There are systems, mainly industrial, for maintaining a specified pressure in a closed space; also, there are systems, mainly of medical or industrial use for maintaining a specified overpressure in a room, compared to other spaces, moreover able to purify the air. However, these systems are not designed for or able to maintain a specified absolute or a variable differential pressure in the room, where the pressure in the room is in a range similar to the one of the normal atmosphere at a specified location. Therefore, the known systems do not fulfill the purpose and functions of the present invention.
The disclosed invention is a system able to purify the air, send it to a room, and control the absolute pressure in that room by adding or removing air from the room, according to the case. In addition, the disclosed system may control the humidity and/or temperature of the circulated air. Further, the system may be taking into account the pressure difference in the room for controlling the air flow. The disclosed system may be provided with means for remote communication and control and with means for storing the data on its operation.
The purpose of the system described by the invention is to create an atmospheric ambiance for subjects in a room such that the room atmosphere to conform to findings relating the air pressure and humidity with the quality of life for people with some specific health conditions. Such conditions may include arthritis, asthma, and migraines related to the atmospheric conditions. Briefly, the invention may improve the quality of life of some of the people presenting meteoropathies. In medical terms, meteoropaths are people negatively affected by weather conditions. Meteoropathies may include asthma, increase in osteoarthritis joint pain, and psychiatric conditions. Other studies have shown that weather conditions, especially air pressure variations, may increase susceptibility of acute myocardial infarction and strokes. These conditions were related to clime and weather conditions in several studies, but not for all subjects and in a variable degree for those affected.

ADVANTAGES OF THE INVENTION

The disclosed invention creates the first device to maintain a specified pressure in a typical room for meteopaths, moreover maintaining a clean atmosphere in the room. The system is able to create larger or smaller pressure than in the environment, according to the desire or needs of the user, or according to medical advice. Further, the system may dehumidify or increase the humidity of the air and cool or heat the air sent into the room.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The accompanying drawings, which are included in order to provide additional information to the invention and are incorporated in the specification, illustrate schemes of implementation of the invention and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention.

FIG. 1 represents the scheme of the air purifier with pressure control, with the essential elements.
FIG. 2 shows a simplified scheme of the air conduit of the system allowing for reversing the direction of air flow, according to the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The invention may improve the quality of life for those sensitive to weather conditions (the medical term is meteoropaths). In medical terms, meteoropaths are people negatively affected by weather conditions. Are you one of them? Meteoropathies may include asthma, increase in osteoarthritis joint pain, and psychiatric conditions. Some psychiatric disorders were also related to clime and weather conditions in several studies. Other studies have shown that weather conditions, especially air pressure variations, may increase susceptibility of acute myocardial infarction and strokes.
Standard air pressure is 101.3 kPa at 0 m altitude and decrease to about 90 kPa at 1000 m. The atmospheric pressure at the sea level varies significantly according to meteorologic conditions. Normal barometric pressures range between 29.8- and 30.2-inch Hg; pressure over 30.20 inch Hg are considered high; low pressures are considered to be below 29.8 inch Hg and may occur during warm air conditions and rainstorms. So, atmospheric pressure varies between 28 and 31 inches of mercury, that is 95 to 105 kPa, or a variation from -6 kPa to +4 kPa (sea level). It is the pressure difference the system should be able to compensate.
Research has proved that high pressure may have a negative effect on the incidence of myocardial infarction (r =-0.7300 P < 0.05) (Li, Sheng, He 1997) and strokes (Bao et al., 2019). On the other hand, low air pressure has a triggering effect for asthma, see (Jia Fu et al., 2022). Other studies suggest that "the possibility of nonfatal violence and psychiatric hospitalization would increase in hot and arid weather with low air pressure" (Talaei et al., 2014) and that people with other psychiatric conditions may be affected by weather (Licanin, Fisekovic, Babić 2011), (Di Nicola et al., 2020), (Lickiewicz et al., 2020).
The best documented health condition affected by weather is arthritis and arthritis pain, see (Harvard Health Blog, June 22, 2020), (Weather and Arthritis Pain, Arthritis Foundation), (Timmermans et al., 2014, PMID: 24597710), (Savage et al., 2015), (Timmermans et al., 2015), (Wilder, Hall, Barrett, 2003), (Liu et al., 2006) etc.
Concluding this review of the findings in the literature, people with health conditions such as osteoarthritis joint pain; arthritis pain; rheumatoid arthritis; euthymic bipolar condition, predisposition to stroke, and people with allergies or asthma may benefit from maintaining in their room a relatively constant pressure in a normal range, with normal humidity and lack of particulate contaminants.
The disclosed system includes one or several air filters (1) of high efficiency, for example HEPA or ULPA filters, for removing particulate contaminants from the air. The system may include germs killing devices (2), for example ultra-violet (UV) lamps or LEDs, or ionizing devices. The purified air is driven by an air pump (3) and conducted through the clean compartment of the system directly to the room, or through a tube or conduct (4) to the room (5) with controlled atmosphere. The system further includes an absolute pressure sensor (6) that connects to the room through a tube (7), where the sensor measures the absolute pressure in the room (5). Further, the system may include a differential pressure sensor (8) that measures the pressure difference between the controlled room (5) and an external space. The system may include supplementary sensors for measuring the air flow and the quality of the air sent to the controlled room (5). The quality of the air may be determined wit a sensor of CO2 and with sensors for particulate contaminants.
The control system (9) receives data from all the sensors and receives the preset desirable interval of pressure in the room with conditioned atmosphere from manual or remote controls. Based on the data and presetting, the controller adjusts the air flow through the air pump (3). The airflow may be determined indirectly knowing the two pressures - inside and outside the room (5), or may be determined with a flow sensor (10), which also send data to the controller (9). Also, the controller may receive data from a sensor (11) for the particulate contaminants. Further, the controller may adjust the other parameters of the circulated air, such as humidity and/or temperature, using a dehumidifier (12) and a heater-cooler.
The preferred pressure ranges the system has to compensate is that of typical atmospheric pressure variations at sea level, that is, -5 kPa below to +5 kPa above the normal atmospheric pressure of 10 kPa. The location of the user may be at various altitudes, where the normal pressure in the atmosphere has specific values, dependent on the altitude. Therefore, the system has to have the "normal limits" set for a specific altitude.
The system may be manufactured to be battery operated or power line operated, or both.
If the room with the atmosphere controlled by the system has to be partially or almost totally sealed, for example with windows that do not open, as in some buildings our days, a way of refreshing the air has to be guaranteed. When the room is almost totally sealed, one needs to bring air inside - which has to be first purified - also letting some air outside (impurified). Therefore, a double circulation should be permitted, at least to clear the CO2 produced by the people inside during respiration. The air in the room is refreshed from time to time by bringing fresh air from outside by allowing the slight increasing of the pressure in the room, then by decreasing the pressure, while maintaining all the time the pressure inside the room in the specified range.
The need of either increasing or decreasing the pressure in the room, according to external conditions, requires a special device for configuring the air flow in opposite directions. For this purpose, one may use a double air pump configuration, with the two pumps blowing the air in the opposite directions, with air filtering and humidity control only provided to the air way toward the room. This solution, while perfectly acceptable, increases the cost and the volume of the system. A second solution is to use a pump with a motor with controlled rotation direction, where the motor can be coupled to any of two fans blowing air in opposite directions. This solution uses a single air conduct, but it also increases costs of the air pump and has the disadvantage of impurifying the air filter on the inner side toward the chamber; this type of impurification means that when the air flow is directed toward the room, the contaminants will be at least partly brought back to the room. A third solution is shown in Figure 2 and uses an air pump (3) blowing air in a single direction and a set of valves (13, 14,15) that configure the air duct in two different manners, one through the filter for the air flow toward the chamber, and the second through a supplementary air way not involving the filter.
Typically, units for reducing air humidity include a compressor to compress the refrigerant, one or several condenser coils for removing the heat from the refrigerator to the outside air, and a fan for improving the efficiency of the condensing coil. The system, according to the invention, may use such a dehumidifying device. However, according to the invention, for reducing noise in the device used for removing humidity, a Peltier cooling device may be used for condensing the water vapor instead of the typical compressor-condenser-fan devices.
A heat pump may be added to the system according to the invention, for cooling or heating the air sent to the atmosphere conditioned room.
The system case may be embedded in and traverse a wall, a wall-embedded furniture, or a door, with the air inlets/outlets on the two sides of the wall or door. Conversely, air ducts may be use to the external side of the room, or to the internal side of the room, or both. Vent covers with slits cuts may protect the air inlets and outlets.
Various supplementary devices can be added, such as sound and light alarms signaling the pressure is not in the set range, means for remote control, and means for communication. In addition, the system may be remotely connected to weather prediction data sources and set to start regulating the pressure according to the weather predictions. The system may further remotely connect to external devices such as a phone or tablet producing recordings of the operation parameters, including pressure in the controlled room, and allowing the remote control of the operation, including the setting of the operation pressure limits, humidity limits, and temperature limits.
LIMITS. The literature is not fully conclusive about the benefits of maintaining a normal atmospheric pressure for meteoropaths. In addition, the individual variability is reported in the literature to be very high, with subjects have a wide range of susceptibilities to atmospheric conditions. Moreover, an essentially unknown mixture of atmospheric conditions, including air pressure, air humidity and air temperature seem to play a role in metheoropathies, with the mixture of unfavorable conditions largely varying from subject to subject. Therefore, medical knowledge today is either very limited or inconclusive, leaving to individual subjects to test if the pressure is a factor and how important a factor the atmospheric pressure is in their case. Consequently, the invention may benefit some subjects while being of no use for others.
The presented system is useful in advancing and improving the research on the meteopathies. It is still unclear in the current state of the art what effect the combination of factors such as air humidity and its variation, air pressure and its variation, and air temperature and its variation have in various meteopathies. For example, it is still unclear if the value of the air pressure or its variation is a factor in certain meteopathies, such as rheumatoid pain and temporary worsening of rheumatism conditions. The use of the disclosed system in studies about these combined factors is seen as one of the applications targeted. The flexibility of operation of the systems disclosed makes them a good research tool and, at the same time, allows users to adjust the operation to their own response to meteoropathies.

Claims

1. The pressure control atmosphere conditioner with pressure control according to the invention, characterised in that includes one or more air filters (1) of which at least one is high or very high efficiency (HEPA or ULPA) or higher, with or without a carbon-based absorbent filter or similar, a dehumidifier (2), one or more devices (2) for destroying bacteria and viruses with UV rays, ions, or other agents, such as ozone, an air pump (3) with adjustable flow and pressure, the purified air flow being led through the casing body (4) which includes the filters and the pump either directly or through one or more tubes or ducts (4) to the chamber or enclosure (5) and which is essentially separate and sealed, in which the clean or pressurized atmosphere is created, the air brought for purification coming from outside this chambers or enclosures, a pump control system (6), whereas the controller adjusts the flow according to the speed of change (gradient, derivative) of the pressure in the pressurized room, absolute pressure sensors (8), differential pressure sensors (7), and possibly flow sensors (9) and air purity sensors (10) connected to the control system (11), pneumatic connections for measuring pression through tubes (12) in the room or enclosure (5) and in the area external to the enclosure where clean and pressure-controlled air is maintained, the area from which the air is brought for purification, as well as means for manually setting the pressure created in the atmosphere space controlled, display devices, devices for short-distance control of operation, including settings, as well as means of communication and long-distance control, for example via the Internet or radio; moreover the atmosphere conditioner with pressure control may have means for changing the air flow from inside to outside the controlled room or from the outside to the inside, whereas the said means may include controllable valves (13,14,15).

2. The atmosphere conditioner with pressure control according to claim 1, characterized in that the system can be connected to a computer system of a hospital or medical practice for monitoring the operation and for remote control of the system.

3. The atmosphere conditioner with pressure control, according to claim 1, characterized in that it can include video, audio or other devices for remote monitoring of the subject in the room where the air pressure and purity are controlled.

4. The atmosphere conditioner with pressure control, according to claim 1, characterized in that it can include alarm devices to warn when the pressure in the room is outside a range of allowable or desirable pressures preset by the user or medical personnel caring for the subject.

5. The atmosphere conditioner with pressure control, according to claim 1, characterized in that it can include devices for reducing and/or increasing the humidity of the air, to operate with manual or automatic control, at the choice of the user.

6. The atmosphere conditioner with pressure control, according to claim 1, characterised in that flows the cleaned, pressure-controlled air in the user's room through a tube or conduct with the distant end flattened and fitting under the door of the room with controlled pressure, essentially sealing the space under the door.

6. The controller (9) of the atmosphere conditioner with pressure control, according to claim 1, characterised in that detects and memorized the history of the increase of the pressurized room (5), derives an estimation of the next controlled value of the air flow, makes a prediction of the duration needed for attaining a specified pressure in a specified time in the room, and adjusts the average power of the air pump (3) accordingly to that prediction and to the pressure difference between the current pressure in the room and the desired pressure.

7. The atmosphere conditioner with pressure control, according to claim 1, characterised in that determines if the desired pressure in the room is not attainable and produces sound and light signals and, when the difference between the desired pressure and the attainable one is large, produces alarms for both the user and the remotely monitoring person.

8. The atmosphere conditioner with pressure control, according to claim 1, characterised in that monitors the noise and vibration level it produces inside its case or at the level of the cover of its case and reduces the flow such that the noise level is below a certain specified noise level.

9. The atmosphere conditioner with pressure control, according to claim 1, characterised in that includes a device for configuring and controlling the air flow in opposite directions from the outside to the inside the room, or vice versa, essentially based on the value of the air pressure in the room, using a set of valves (13, 14, 15).

10. The atmosphere conditioner with pressure control, according to claim 1, characterised in that includes devices for air heating and cooling.

11. The atmosphere conditioner with pressure control, according to claim 1, characterised in that remotely connects to weather prediction data sources and starts regulating the pressure according to the predictions.

12. The atmosphere conditioner with pressure control, according to claim 1, characterised in that remotely connects to external devices such as a phone or tablet producing recordings of the operation parameters, including pressure in the controlled room, and allowing the remote control of the operation, including the setting of the operation pressure limits, humidity limits, and temperature limits.