Site News  |   Monitor Keywords  |   Monitor Archive  |   Organizer  |   Account Info  |

Filter system of an electronic equipment enclosure

Filter system of an electronic equipment enclosure description/claims

This is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/821,953 filed Jun. 26, 2007, which is a divisional of U.S. application Ser. No. 10/722,810 filed Nov. 26, 2003. The entire disclosures of the aforementioned applications are incorporated herein by reference.

The present invention relates to a filter system, and more particularly to a two filter element system for filtering particulate matter from an air flow path at an upstream location and water vapor at a downstream location.

Electronic equipment enclosures are often located out-of-doors. Examples of such electronic hardware are telecommunication equipment, cable television equipment and data transmission equipment. Often this class of equipment is referred to as “outside plant equipment” and/or “remote terminals.” Also, it is well known that this equipment generates heat and undesirable gas so that some sort of cooling and/or ventilation is required. Further, this outside plant equipment may be located just about any place on earth, where it may be exposed to inhospitable climates, such as very warm, cold, wet, dry and/or windy conditions.

Equipment enclosures containing sensitive but heat generating electronic equipment are sensitive to the environment in which the equipment enclosure is located. For example, humidity, salt, fog, oil, dust, rain and the like tend to degrade the performance of and potentially destroy electronic equipment that has not been properly “hardened” to allow deployment in harsh environments. Even some indoor environments are considered harsh. Thus, electronic equipment operating in certain types of chemical plants must also be hardened.

Relative humidity governs the amount of moisture contained in materials at equilibrium. The amount of moisture is almost independent of temperature. Most air normally contains a certain amount of water vapor. Oxygen in the air reacts with metal where the reaction is facilitated by the presence of water on the surface of the metal. Very thin aqueous films can form on metal even at less than 100 percent relative humidity. Corrosion ensues and may be increased when contaminated with industrial pollutants, such as chlorides and sulfides. Further, chemical reaction rates increase with increasing temperatures, increasing concentrations of reactants and under increased pressures.

Reliability of electronic equipment is typically linked to relative humidity, whereas the process of moisture diffusion through materials is linked to absolute humidity. It has been demonstrated that there is a critical relative humidity above which corrosion is rapid but below which corrosion is low. For most metals the critical relative humidity is between 70 and 80 percent.

To minimize cost, it would be desirable to use electronic equipment which has not been hardened. In other words, it would be desirable to use indoor rated electronic equipment in an outdoor environment or an indoor corrosive environment thereby saving the expense of hardening the equipment.

The problem associated with electronic equipment being exposed to harsh environments has been addressed in such books as Advances In Aerosol Filtration, Kvestoslav Spurney Editor, Lewis Publishing, 1998; Mass Transfer Operations, Treybal, McGraw Hill, 1987 and Transport Phenomenon, Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot, Wiley 1960. Articles have also appeared, such as, “The Impact Of Ventilation And Indoor Air Quality On Electronic Equipment” by C. J. Weschler and H. C. Shield, ASHRAE Transactions, Part I: Symposia, pp. 455-463 (1991); “Mathematical Modeling Of Chemical Reactive Pollutants In Indoor Air”, Environmental Science Technology, Vol. 20, No. 9, pp. 924-934 (1986); “Corrosion Of Electronics”, by J. D. Sinclair in Journal of the Electrochemical Society, pp. 89C-95C, March 1988 and “The Effect of Building Fan Operation on Indoor-Out-Door Dust Relationships by C. J. Weschler, S. P. Kelty and J. E. Lingovsky in the Journal of Air Pollution Control Association, Vol. 33, pp. 624-629, (1983).

Several patents have attempted to address corrosion problems, including U.S. Pat. No. 5,886,296; U.S. Pat. No. 6,063,152 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,395,073. There have also been patents dealing with filtering, monitoring and obstructions clearing including U.S. Pat. No. 5,014,908; U.S. Pat. No. 5,378,254; U.S. Pat. No. 5,429,649; U.S. Pat. No. 5,461,368; U.S. Pat. No. 5,668,535; U.S. Pat. No. 5,711,785; U.S. Pat. No. 5,914,453; U.S. Pat. No. 6,507,282 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,532,151.

The difficulties encountered with previous devices have been overcome by the present invention. The present invention relates to a filter system having at least two filter elements in an air flow path formed in an electronic equipment enclosure where an upstream filter element is structured to filter particulate matter and a downstream filter element is structured to a filter water vapor.

There are a number of advantages, features, and objects achieved with the present invention which are believed not to be available in earlier related devices. One such advantage is that using a two filter system with a particulate filter element upstream and a water vapor filter element downstream blocks undesirable contaminants from entering the electronic enclosure and degrading the equipment inside. The two filter system also protects the water vapor filter element which is more expensive and harder to clean with the upstream particulate filter element which is less expensive and easier to clean. The invention also allows the use of commercial grade components in an outdoor electronic equipment enclosure without requiring the added cost inherent in hardening those components for a harsh climatic deployment.

A more complete understanding of the present invention and other objects, advantages and features thereof, will be gained from a consideration of the following description of a preferred embodiment read in conjunction with the accompanying drawing provided herein. The embodiment represents an example of the invention which is described here in compliance with Title 35 U.S.C. section 112 (first paragraph), but the invention itself is defined by the attached claims.

FIG. 1 is a diagrammatic view of an outdoor electronic equipment enclosure illustrating the two filter arrangement.

• Provisional Patent
• Utility Patent

• What Is a Patent?
• What Is a Trademark or Servicemark?
• What Is a Copyright?
• Patent Laws