Articles for cooling beverages
OwnerRandall S. Marshallinventor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An article for cooling a beverage includes a container of plastic material for containing a phase-change medium such as water. The cooling article is used by freezing the phase-change medium and immersing the article in the beverage. The article is preferably weighted to compensate for its positive buoyancy so that it is either generally suspended within the beverage or at the bottom of the beverage. Preferably, the article has projections thereon which increase its surface area, and the article may include internal metallic fins to increase the rate at which heat is transferred from the surface of the article to the interior thereof. If desired, the article may be configured to provide a secondary meaning, and it may include a phosphorescent medium so as to glow in areas of little or no light.
Claims4
An article for cooling beverages and the like, the article comprising:
- a container having a wall of plastic material completely enclosing a space, the wall defining a hollow main body portion and a plurality of hollow projecting portions communicating with the main body portions which hollow projecting portions increase the surface area of the container;
- a phase-change medium confined within the hollow main body portion and plurality of hollow projecting portions, the phase-change material changing phase from a solid state to a liquid state at approximately the point at which ice melts to water and the presence of the phase-change material in the hollow pojecting portions promoting rapid cooling of the beverage;
- a plurality of metallic elements projecting inwardly from those portions of the wall defining the hollow projecting portions of the container to further increase the heat transfer rate from the wall and projections to the bulk of the phase-change medium, and
- weight means within the container to compensate for positive buoyancy thereof, whereby the container does not float at the top of the beverage being cooled thereby.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.