System and method for predicting tank failure of a water heater
AssigneeA. O. Smith Corporation
InventorsRay Oliver Knoeppel, Nate Walker, Yaojun Wang
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Abstract
A storage-type water heater including a tank configured to contain a fluid, a powered anode at least partially disposed in the fluid, and an electronic processor. The electronic processor is configured to receive a current measurement of the powered anode, determine whether the current measurement exceeds a maximum threshold, record, when the current measurement exceeds the maximum threshold, a plurality of tank potential measurements over a duration of time, determine, based on the recorded tank potential measurements, a predicted time to tank failure, and output an alert corresponding to the predicted time to tank failure.
Claims15
A storage-type water heater comprising:
- a tank configured to contain a fluid;
- a powered anode at least partially disposed in the fluid;
- and
- an electronic processor configured to
- receive a current measurement of the powered anode,
- determine whether the current measurement exceeds a maximum threshold,
- record, when the current measurement exceeds the maximum threshold, a plurality of tank potential measurements over a duration of time,
- determine, based on the recorded tank potential measurements, a predicted time to tank failure, and
- output an alert corresponding to the predicted time to tank failure.
A storage-type water heater comprising:
- a tank configured to contain a fluid;
- a powered anode at least partially disposed in the fluid;
- and
- an electronic processor configured to
- receive a current measurement of the powered anode,
- determine whether the current measurement exceeds a maximum threshold,
- determine, based on the maximum threshold and an adjustment factor, a predicted time to tank failure, and
- output an alert corresponding to the predicted time to tank failure.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.