Urinal air freshener
AssigneeMicrolin, LLC
InventorAshok V. Joshi
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An automatic dispensing device for volatile fluid operable to apply one or more agent to a local environment for more than 14 days. Preferred devices dispense a first agent for air freshening, and may optionally dispense a second agent, such as a drain cleaner. A workable drain cleaner is structured to permit a slow release of drain cleaning agent. A dispensing device may nonexclusively operate by evaporation of volatile fluid from a carrier material that is infused with the volatile fluid; gravity-induced drip from a bulk supply of volatile fluid through a small orifice onto an emanator; osmotic transfer of volatile fluid from a bulk supply; gas-pump drive of volatile fluid at controlled pressure; or diffusion of volatile fluid through a wall of a container of bulk volatile fluid; and combinations thereof.
Claims19
A method for making an air freshener, comprising:
- providing an emanator configured to resist a humanly perceptible change in configuration size and shape during a useful life of the emanator for air freshening, the emanator comprising a material capable of imbibing a volatile fluid in liquid phase when exposed to the volatile fluid in a liquid environment at substantially ambient temperature conditions and subsequently off-gassing the imbibed volatile fluid in vapor phase when the emanator is exposed to a gas environment at ambient conditions;
- and
- wetting the emanator with the volatile fluid under ambient temperature conditions for between about 1 hour and about 48 hours to disperse the volatile fluid into the emanator to a weight percent of greater than about 3%, where weight percent is calculated as A/B*100, and A is weight of imbibed volatile fluid and B is weight of the emanator material prior to the imbibing process;
- and
- associating the emanator with a fluid-resistant splash knock-down member prior to placing the air freshener into service as a urinal air freshener.
An apparatus, comprising:
- a splash knock-down member comprising a shell with a top surface spaced apart from a bottom surface by a substantially uniform distance, a rim of the shell providing a support foot disposed around a portion of a perimeter of the shell to support the shell on a surface during use, a cross-section of the shell comprising an arcuate shape to define a volume bounded in part by the bottom surface and being open to permit access to the volume through an opening bounded by the perimeter, the top surface carrying a plurality of upstanding splash knock-down elements, the shell comprising a plurality of penetrations structured to permit fluid to travel through the shell, the shell being formed from a material selected from the group consisting of polypropylene, polyethylene, polyester, and polyvinylchloride;
- an emanator associated with the shell, the emanator being configured to resist a humanly perceptible change in configuration size and shape during a useful life of the emanator for air freshening, the emanator comprising a material selected from the group consisting of paper mâchè, plastic clay, material having a high-surface area greater than about 100 m2/g, ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA), styrene-based polymer, styrene-based rubber (SBR), thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), butadiene-based polymer, butadiene-based rubber, gum rubber, and cellulosic rubber;
- and
- a volatile fluid dispersed into the emanator to a weight percent of between about 3% and about 300%, where weight percent is calculated as A/B*100, and A is weight of the volatile fluid and B is dry weight of the emanator.
An apparatus, comprising:
- an emanator structured to resist a humanly perceptible change in configuration size and shape during a useful life of the emanator for air freshening, the emanator comprising a material capable of imbibing a volatile fluid when exposed to volatile fluid in liquid phase and subsequently off-gassing the imbibed volatile fluid in vapor phase when exposed to a gas environment;
- and
- the volatile fluid dispersed into the emanator to a weight percent of between about 3% and about 300%, where weight percent is calculated as A/B*100, and A is weight of the volatile fluid and B is dry weight of the emanator.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.