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US 2018/0008095 A1Published application
Automated gas cooking system
AssigneeW.C. Bradley Co.
InventorsChris Bennett, Alex Gafford
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An outdoor gas cooking system having multiple burners in which, if the individual manual control valves for all of the burners are placed on a high heat setting or some other specified or recognized activation position, a single electronic master control valve can be activated to control the total gas fuel rate to all of the burners in the cooker based, for example, upon a cooking or operational control set point or upon a target flow rate equaling the sum of the design flow rates of all of the burners at the current operating set points of the manual valves.
Claims34
An outdoor cooking system comprising:
- a housing;
- a control unit;
- two or more gas fuel burners or burner elements in the housing, each of the gas fuel burners or burner elements having a gas fuel inlet which includes a manual control valve and a valve position detector which automatically sends or relays to the control unit an electronic signal indicating at least one operating position of the manual control valve;
- a gas fuel supply conduit which supplies a gas fuel to the gas fuel inlets of the gas fuel burners or burner elements;
- and
- a master control valve in the gas fuel supply conduit upstream of all of the manual control valves,
- wherein the control unit automatically determines whether all of the manual control valves are in a master control valve activation position so that when all of the manual control valves are in the master control valve activation position, the control unit allows a user to activate, or the control unit itself automatically activates, a master control function of the master control valve wherein the master control valve automatically controls a total rate of flow of the gas fuel to all of the gas fuel burners or burner elements in the housing based upon at least one cooking process control set point.
4 more elements
An outdoor cooking system comprising:
- a housing;
- a control unit;
- two or more gas fuel burners or burner elements in the housing, each of the gas fuel burners or burner elements having a gas fuel inlet which includes a manual control valve and a valve position detector which automatically sends or relays to the control unit an electronic signal indicating at least one operating position of the manual control valve;
- a gas fuel supply conduit which supplies a gas fuel to the gas fuel inlets of the gas fuel burners or burner elements;
- and
- a master control valve in the gas fuel supply conduit upstream of all of the manual control valves,
- wherein the control unit comprises a processing unit and a program code which is embodied on a computer readable storage component and is readable by the processing unit to automatically determine whether all of the manual control valves are in a master control valve activation position and to operate the master control valve according to a programmed procedure in which when all of the manual control valves are in the master control valve activation position, a user is allowed to activate, or the control unit itself automatically activates, a master control function of the master control valve wherein the master control valve automatically controls a total rate of flow of the gas fuel to all of the gas fuel burners or burner elements in the housing based upon at least one cooking process control set point.
4 more elements
An outdoor cooking system comprising:
- a housing;
- a control unit;
- two or more gas fuel burners or burner elements in the housing, each of the gas fuel burners or burner elements having a gas fuel inlet which includes a manual control valve and a valve position detector which automatically sends or relays to the control unit an electronic signal indicating an operating position of the manual control valve;
- a gas fuel supply conduit which supplies a gas fuel to the gas fuel inlets of the gas fuel burners or burner elements;
- and
- a master control valve in the gas fuel supply conduit upstream of all of the manual control valves,
- wherein the control unit automatically determines whether the manual control valve for each of the gas fuel burners or burner elements is either closed or in a master control valve activation position so that when the manual control valves for all of the gas fuel burners or burner elements are either closed or in the master control valve activation position and the manual control valve of one or more of the gas fuel burners or burner elements is in the master control valve activation position, the control unit allows a user to activate, or the control unit itself automatically activates, a master control function of the master control valve wherein the master control valve automatically controls a total rate of flow of the gas fuel, based upon at least one cooking process control set point, to all of the one or more gas fuel burners or burner elements in the housing for which the master control valve for the gas fuel burner or burner element is in the master control valve activation position.
4 more elements
An outdoor cooking system comprising:
- a housing;
- a control unit;
- two or more gas fuel burners or burner elements in the housing, each of the gas fuel burners or burner elements having a gas fuel inlet which includes a manual control valve having a plurality of manual set points and a valve position detector which automatically sends or relays to the control unit an electronic signal indicating a current manual set point of the manual control valve, wherein one of the manual set points is an off position of the manual control valve for a zero design flow rate of a gas fuel and each remaining one of the manual set points is a partially or fully open position of the manual control valve having a design flow rate of the gas fuel greater than zero corresponding thereto;
- a gas fuel supply conduit which supplies the gas fuel to the gas fuel inlets of the gas fuel burners or burner elements;
- and
- a master control valve in the gas fuel supply conduit upstream of all of the manual control valves,
- wherein the control unit automatically determines the current manual set point of each of the manual control valves and determines a total of the design flow rates corresponding to the current set points of all of the manual control valves, and the control unit allows a user to activate, or the control unit itself automatically activates, a master control function of the master control valve wherein the master control valve automatically controls a total flow of the gas fuel to all of the gas fuel burners or burner elements in the housing for which the manual control valve of the gas fuel burner or burner element is partially or fully open at a rate which is substantially the total of the design flow rates corresponding to the current set points of all of the manual control valves.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.