System monitoring refrigeration charge
First Claim
1. A process for monitoring the refrigerant charge in at least one refrigeration circuit of a heating or cooling system comprising the steps of:
- reading values of sensed conditions occurring in the heating or cooling system wherein the values are produced by a plurality of sensors positioned at various locations within the heating or cooling system;
processing the read values of the sensed conditions occurring in the heating or cooling system through a neural network so as to produce a computed refrigerant charge for at least one refrigeration circuit of the heating or cooling system that is based on the read values of sensed conditions;
comparing the computed refrigerant charge with a nominal refrigerant charge for at least one refrigeration circuit of the heating or cooling system; and
transmitting a status message as to the amount of refrigerant charge in at least one refrigeration circuit of the refrigeration circuit in response to said step of comparing the computed refrigerant charge with the nominal refrigerant charge.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A refrigerant monitoring system for a heating or cooling system includes a neural network that is used to compute the refrigerant charge in at least one refrigeration circuit of the system. The neural network is trained to learn certain characteristics of the heating or cooling system during a development mode of operation. The thus trained neural network timely computes refrigerant charge during a run time mode of operation. Information as to the computed refrigerant charge being at variance with the nominal amount of refrigerant charge for at least one refrigeration circuit is made available for assessment during the run time mode of operation.
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Citations
32 Claims
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1. A process for monitoring the refrigerant charge in at least one refrigeration circuit of a heating or cooling system comprising the steps of:
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reading values of sensed conditions occurring in the heating or cooling system wherein the values are produced by a plurality of sensors positioned at various locations within the heating or cooling system; processing the read values of the sensed conditions occurring in the heating or cooling system through a neural network so as to produce a computed refrigerant charge for at least one refrigeration circuit of the heating or cooling system that is based on the read values of sensed conditions; comparing the computed refrigerant charge with a nominal refrigerant charge for at least one refrigeration circuit of the heating or cooling system; and transmitting a status message as to the amount of refrigerant charge in at least one refrigeration circuit of the refrigeration circuit in response to said step of comparing the computed refrigerant charge with the nominal refrigerant charge. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A process for learning the characteristics of a heating or cooling system so as to predict the refrigerant charge in at least one refrigeration circuit of the heating or cooling system, said process comprising the steps of:
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storing a plurality of sets of data for sensed conditions occurring within the heating or cooling system when the system is subjected to various load and ambient conditions for known amounts of refrigerant charge in one or more refrigeration circuits of the system; and repetitively processing a number of the stored sets of data through a neural network so as to teach the neural network to accurately predict known refrigerant charges for the particular sets of data in at least one refrigeration circuit whereby the neural network may be used thereafter to process sensed conditions occurring within the heating or cooling system for unknown refrigerant charges so as to produce a computed refrigerant charge in at least one refrigeration circuit for the sensed set of conditions. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22)
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23. A process for monitoring the refrigerant charge present in at least one refrigeration circuit of a heating or cooling system comprising the steps of:
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repetitively reading values of certain sensed conditions produced by a plurality of sensors positioned at various locations within the heating or cooling system; storing each set of read values in a predetermined manner so that each stored value in a set of read values defines a coordinate dimension in multidimensional space; processing each stored set of values through a neural network whereby a computed refrigerant charge is produced at the output of the neural network for each stored set of read values; storing each computed refrigerant charge produced at the output of the neural network for each set of values processed through the neural network; and computing an average of the stored computed refrigerant charges after a predetermined number of computed refrigerant charges have been produced at the output node. - View Dependent Claims (24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32)
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Specification