Air purifier

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10821201-B2
Application number	US-201515560377-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 30, 2015
Priority date	Mar 30, 2015
Publication date	Nov 3, 2020
Grant date	Nov 3, 2020

Abstract

An air purifying operation is performed with a consideration for an influence of a purifying material on a person, and user's comfort and efficiency of the air purifying operation are both achieved. An air purifier includes a casing, an inlet, outlets, blowers, a decontamination unit, air ducts, movable louvers, a horizontal rotation mechanism, an ozone generation mechanism, human detection means, a control unit, or the like. The control unit detects whether or not there is a person in a room by the human detection means. Then, the control unit controls at least one of parameters including an ozone generation amount, a wind direction, an amount, and a speed of blown-out air based on the human detection result. Thus, if there is a person in the room, for example, a human avoiding operation, a human area operation, or the like can be performed. If there is no person, an indoor air purifying operation for uniformly purifying air throughout the room can be performed.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. An air purifier comprising:
a casing having an inlet and an outlet, the outlet being arranged above the inlet;
a blower for drawing air from the inlet into the casing and blowing the air out of the outlet;
a decontamination unit configured to remove contaminants from the air drawn into the casing;
an air duct configured to convey the air from which the contaminants are removed by the decontamination unit to the outlet;
a wind direction adjuster configured to adjust a wind direction of the air blown out of the outlet, the wind direction adjuster being configured to be able to close the outlet;
a purifying material generator configured to generate a purifying material in the casing;
a human detector configured to detect a physical quantity relating to a person, the human detector being provided in the casing; and
a controller having a function of actuating the wind direction adjuster and the purifying material generator, the controller configured to perform:
a first operation mode in which the purifying material is generated by the purifying material generator to purify a space in the casing with the wind direction adjuster closing the outlet,
a second operation mode in which in a case where an air purifying operation is performed with the human detector detecting a person and an index having a correlation to a generation amount of the purifying material being higher than an upper limit reference value, the wind direction of the air blown out of the outlet is set in a direction without the person by the wind direction adjuster,
a third operation mode in which in a case where an air purifying operation is performed with the human detector detecting a person and the index being equal to or lower than the upper limit reference value, the wind direction of the air blown out of the outlet is set in a direction of the person by the wind direction adjuster, and
a fourth operation mode in which in a case where an air purifying operation is performed without the human detector detecting a person, the air blown out of the outlet is distributed throughout a room by the wind direction adjuster,

wherein the controller performs any of the second to fourth operation modes based on a result of the human detector and the index, after the controller performs the first operation mode.

2. The air purifier according to claim 1 , further comprising a contaminant detector configured to detect contaminants in the air,
wherein the controller controls at least one of the generation amount of the purifying material and an output of the blower based on a detection result of the contaminant detector.

3. The air purifier according to claim 2 , wherein the contaminant detector comprises a movable contaminant detector being able to be set up away from the casing, the contaminant detector configured to transmit the contaminant detection result to the controller.

4. The air purifier according to claim 1 , wherein the controller reduces the generation amount of the purifying material to a human allowable reference value or lower when the human detector detects a person.

5. The air purifier according to claim 1 ,
wherein if at least one of a result of the human detector and the index changes while the controller performs any of the second to fourth operation modes, the controller switches the operation mode according to a state after the change.

6. The air purifier according to claim 1 , wherein the index having a correlation to the generation amount of the purifying material is a concentration of the purifying material generated by the purifying material generator or an actuation time of the purifying material generator.

7. The air purifier according to claim 1 , wherein the purifying material generator has a mechanism for generating at least ozone as the purifying material.

8. The air purifier according to claim 1 , wherein the outlet is one of a plurality of outlets and the wind direction adjuster is one of a plurality of the wind direction adjusters, a wind direction of air blown out of each of the plurality of outlets is individually adjusted by each of the plurality of wind direction adjusters.

9. An air purifier comprising:
a casing having an inlet and an outlet, the outlet being arranged above the inlet;
a blower for drawing air from the inlet into the casing and blowing the air out of the outlet;
a decontamination unit configured to remove contaminants from the air drawn into the casing;
an air duct configured to convey the air from which the contaminants are removed by the decontamination unit to the outlet;
a wind direction adjuster configured to adjust a wind direction of the air blown out of the outlet, the wind direction adjuster being configured to be able to close the outlet;
a purifying material generator configured to generate a purifying material in the casing;
a human detector configured to detect a physical quantity relating to a person, the human detector being provided in the casing; and
a controller having a function of actuating the wind direction adjuster and the purifying material generator, the controller configured to perform:
a first operation mode in which in a case where an air purifying operation is performed with the human detector detecting a person and an index having a correlation to a generation amount of the purifying material being higher than an upper limit reference value, the wind direction of the air blown out of the outlet is set in a direction without the person by the wind direction adjuster,
a second operation mode in which in a case where an air purifying operation is performed with the human detector detecting a person and the index being equal to or lower than the upper limit reference value, the wind direction of the air blown out of the outlet is set in a direction of the person by the wind direction adjuster, and
a third operation mode in which in a case where an air purifying operation is performed without the human detector detecting a person, the air blown out of the outlet is distributed throughout a room by the wind direction adjuster,

wherein if at least one of a result of the human detector or the index changes while the controller performs any of the first to third operation modes, the controller switches the operation mode according to a state after the change.

10. The air purifier according to claim 9 , further comprising a contaminant detector configured to detect contaminants in the air,
wherein the controller controls at least one of the generation amount of the purifying material and an output of the blower based on a detection result of the contaminant detector.

11. The air purifier according to claim 10 , wherein the contaminant detector comprises a movable contaminant detector being able to be set up away from the casing, the contaminant detector configured to transmit the contaminant detection result to the controller.

12. The air purifier according to claim 9 , wherein the controller reduces the generation amount of the purifying material to a human allowable reference value or lower when the human detector detects a person.

13. The air purifier according to claim 9 , wherein the index having a correlation to the generation amount of the purifying material is a concentration of the purifying material generated by the purifying material generator or an actuation time of the purifying material generator.

14. The air purifier according to claim 9 , wherein the purifying material generator has a mechanism for generating at least ozone as the purifying material.

15. The air purifier according to claim 9 , wherein the outlet is

Assignees

• Mitsubishi Electric Corp
• Mitsubishi Electric Home Appliance Co Ltd

Inventors

• Saiki Ayumi
• Komae Sota
• Shiga Akira
• Kuge Yosuke
• Akari Yoshitaka
• Nyui Kazuo

Classifications

• A61L9/22 Primary

  Ionisation · CPC title

• F24F8/80

  Self-contained air purifiers · CPC title

• F24F8/26

  using ozone · CPC title

• F24F8/40

  by ozonisation (for sterilisation F24F8/26) · CPC title

• A61L2209/14

  Filtering means · CPC title