A kitchen appliance for preparing yogurt, soft frozen yogurt and ice cream, hard frozen yogurt and ice cream, and cheese. The appliance includes a container having a generally square open top around the periphery of which are switch actuators or contacts. A square cover having a plurality of vent openings formed therethrough and electrical switch devices positioned about its periphery for cooperation with those on the rim of the container is used to select the mode of operation for accommodating the type of food item being prepared based on which of the four possible ways it can be positioned on the container. A motor-driven paddle device is rotationally journaled with respect to the cover and the motors therefor are adapted to be driven either continuously or with a predetermined duty cycle, dependent upon the product being made. Also mounted on the cover is a vent hole occluder that is normally positioned to block the vent holes, but which shifts to a second position uncovering those vent holes when the consistency of the product being produced, as tested by the paddle motion, increases the resistance to rotation. Shifting of the occluding device from the covering position to the open position also actuates a switch to shut off the drive motor and a heating element.

Home yogurt/cheese making machine

A relighter apparatus for operating a pilot burner for a fuel pipeline heater. The relighter apparatus has a controller located at a first location, and a pilot burner assembly and ignition coil located at a second location which is remotely located a distance from the first location. The ignition coil is also electrically connected to the controller. The ignition coil receives a low voltage input based on a signal from the controller and provides a high voltage output at the output thereof. Current corresponding to the high voltage output is transferred from the ignitor coil, through a terminal and to an ignitor rod. A conduction of the electrical current between the second end of the ignitor rod and the pilot burner assembly causes an adequate spark to ignite the air/fuel mixture in the pilot burner assembly, creating a pilot flame.

Relighter control system

The present invention is a vaporizer apparatus (1) and method for uniformly extracting active ingredients of specimen of crude natural product, or inert particulate matrix impregnated with volatile substances without pyrolysis which uses hot air (2), or a heated inert gas stream to volatilize the specimen. The heated air or gas in introduced from below (from either a hot air gun or a high-pressure tank connected to a heat exchanger), and ascends through in most embodiments through a permeable support structure (4) (e.g., fritted glass disk, etc.) subsequently causing specimen particules disposed on the permeable support structure to be suspended within the confines of an isolation chamber (5).

Vaporizer for inhalation and method for extraction of active ingredients from a crude natural product or other matrix

A combination heat exchanger and oxygenator device is provided. The device includes a generally cylindrical housing having first and second compartments with hollow heat exchange tubes and hollow gas exchange tubes disposed therein, a blood inlet, a blood outlet, a heat exchanges medium inlet, a heat exchange medium outlet, an oxygenating fluid inlet and an oxygenating fluid outlet. The housing has a central axis with the second compartment being concentric thereto. The blood flow passage is defined by blood entering the device generally axially through a path extending along the central axis of the housing and flows generally radially through the second, oxygenating compartment.

Cylindrical blood heater/oxygenator

A water heater apparatus includes a water conduit having an inlet and an outlet. A primary heat exchanger has a water side defining a portion of the water conduit. A burner is operatively associated with the primary heat exchanger for heating water in the water side of the primary heat exchanger. A variable flow blower provides pre-mixed combustion air and fuel gas to the burner at a controlled blower flow rate within a blower flow rate range. This apparatus allows the heat output of the water heater to be continuously varied within a substantial flow rate range having a turn down ratio of as much as four to one.

Water heater with continuously variable air and fuel input

A heat transfer structure and system including a matrix of tubes and spheres bonded together to provide a conduit for a first fluid such as water and a plurality of interconnected paths for a second fluid such as hot flue gas. The paths are made up of the spaces between the spheres such that the walls of the paths are portions of spherical surfaces. The total path length is made less than twenty times the average radius of curvature of the spherical surfaces and the spacing between adjacent tube elements is of the same order of magnitude as the average length of the paths. A water heater or boiler so constructed may be made to transfer substantially all the heat in a flue gas to water in an average path length of one inch or less.

Heat transfer structure

A package heat exchange system using an expanded surface gas-fired burner to supply heat via a heat exchange coil in a dome above the extended surface heat exchanger which heats domestic hot water and supplies heat via the dome to a radiator for heating a living area of a home. A control system provides for utilizing steam from the extended surface heat exchanger to heat the coil in the dome and maintains a first pressure for supplying the domestic hot water and a higher pressure when radiator heat is called for. The heat for domestic hot water may be further heat transferred in a fourth heat exchanger which adjusts the temperature of the domestic hot water. The heat supplied to the radiator may be self-pumping by utilizing steam and the heat to the radiator may be cut off by supplying a control to the return pipe of the radiator which allows the radiator to fill with condensate from the steam.

Self-pumping water boiler system

A heat exchanger comprising a bundle of flexible tubes extended longitudinally and asymmetrically through a flexible tubing of larger diameter to form a tube-in-tube assembly which is wound helically into a coil of desired size, opposing end portions of the coil being provided with suitable fittings for permitting independent connection of the outer tubing to one fluid source and the bundle of flexible tubes to another fluid source.

Coiled heat exchanger

Apparatus for freezing a product such as ice cream, which apparatus employs a selected eutectic solution which may be frozen in a home freezer and then, in turn, used to freeze the product, the solution, such as an aqueous solution of potassium chloride, being housed in a hollow-walled receptacle which contains the product to be frozen.

Home freezing appliance

A burner for burning a mixture of a combustible gas and air including a curved wall member provided with a multiplicity of ports distributed throughout a substantial area of the wall. The ports are arranged in an ordered pattern such that every port, with the exception of a few along the edges of the burner, is surrounded by a plurality of closely adjacent ports. The size of each port and the distance between adjacent port edges are such that the jets of the gas-air mixture which issue from the ports merge into a common body of such mixture and form a closed lower pressure pocket around each port below such common body. The outer edges of such pocket are located above the minimum ignition level of each port and below the normal outer flame reach distance of the burner for the gas-air mixture supplied to the burner. As a result the flame produced by the burner may be stabilized in either of two regimes or in a combination of both depending upon the rate at which the mixture is supplied to the burner. One is in the form of a jet of flame adjacent each port stabilized by return eddies of hot gases into the pocket surrounding the jet. The other is in the form of a complex sheet of flame stabilized, at least in part, by a portion of the flame located at lower velocity regions between higher velocity jet regions.

William H. Hapgood

Papers

Heat transfer structure

Self-pumping water boiler system

Coiled heat exchanger

Home freezing appliance

Multiport high density burner