Refrigerated cabinet and cooling module for same
OwnerHarvey D. Lilkeinventor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A cooling module mountable within a cabinet to provide cooling of the interior thereof has a cold end of its cooling system exposed to an exterior of the module at a top or bottom wall of its casing. A fan is mounted within the cabinet to discharge warm air heated by a hot end of the cooling system through discharge openings provided in an end panel of the casing. Cabinet walls may be provided in the form of one or more laminate sheets having an insulating layer and an exterior cladding. The one or more sheets may be bent or assembled as needed to form the cabinet structure. Shipping the cabinet to an end user or intermediary in flat panel form reduces the necessary volume of packaging to ease handling and reduce shipping costs.
Claims19
A cooling module comprising:
- a casing having top, bottom and side walls and opposing front and rear end faces defining an interior of the casing, the interior of the casing being divided to define a first chamber and a second chamber;
- a cooling system supported within the casing and having a hot end disposed in the first chamber and a cold end disposed in the second chamber, the front face of the casing having both inlet and discharge openings formed therein at the first chamber, the inlet and discharge openings facing away from the casing in a common direction at the front face thereof to communicate the first chamber with the exterior of the casing at only a front end of the casing, and the cold end in the second chamber being exposed to an exterior of the casing at one of the top and bottom walls;
- and
- a fan supported within the first chamber and arranged to discharge air therefrom through the discharge openings in the front face after entry of the air into the first chamber through the inlet openings in the front face and heating of the air in the first chamber by the hot end of the cooling system.
A refrigerated cabinet in combination with a cooling module for insertion into the refrigerated cabinet,
- the refrigerated cabinet comprising:
- a cabinet formed of insulated panels including a top cabinet wall, a bottom cabinet wall, side cabinet walls and a rear cabinet wall connected to define an open front;
- and
- a front door connected to the cabinet and movable between an open position exposing the open front and a closed position at least partly covering the open front;
- and the cooling module comprising:
- a casing defining a top wall, a bottom wall and two side walls;
- and
- a cooling system having a hot end and a cold end and a fan supported within the casing for discharging heated air from the hot end, the cold end being exposed to an exterior of the casing at the top or bottom wall thereof and a front face of the casing having inlet and discharge openings to facilitate movement of air past the hot end of the cooling system for discharge of the heated air through the open front of the cabinet;
- wherein the panels are formed from a laminate defined by a layer of an insulating foam material and an exterior cladding material;
- and
- wherein the panels are supplied as a flat continuous sheet of the laminate which can be bent to form corners and define the top cabinet wall, bottom cabinet wall, side cabinet walls and rear cabinet wall.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.