Bibliographic Details
| Title: |
Smart gas cylinder cap |
| Patent Number: |
10837,814 |
| Publication Date: |
November 17, 2020 |
| Appl. No: |
16/572951 |
| Application Filed: |
September 17, 2019 |
| Abstract: |
The design and structure of a smart gas cylinder valve cap coupled with a smart MEMS mass flow meter, an embedded iBeacon or RFID reader and a remote data transmission module, which is capable of formulating an Internet of Things (IoT) system, is demonstrated in the disclosure. The smart gas cylinder cap(s) can be directly used to replace the mechanical valve handwheel or directly attached to the top of the existing mechanical handwheel as a smart data relay, and the cap(s) can either be applied to a single or plural numbers of gas cylinders while the smart gas flow meter shall communicate with the smart gas cap as well as to relay gas consumption data to a designated data center or a “cloud” which can further interface with the users and suppliers of the gas cylinders. The system is beneficial for many of the existing gas cylinder applications such as construction gas process, medical gas racks, gas cylinders for food and beverage, and gas racks for electronics fabrication, where the gas cylinder status, gas consumption as well as cylinder logistics are critical for the applications. |
| Inventors: |
Huang, Liji (Santa Clara, CA, US); Batra, Alok (San Jose, CA, US); Pokkuluri, Venkata Sai Tejeswar (San Jose, CA, US); Chen, Chih-Chang (Cupertino, CA, US) |
| Assignees: |
Siargo Ltd. (Santa Clara, CA, US) |
| Claim: |
1. A smart gas cylinder cap system including a smart gas cylinder cap and a MEMS mass flow meter for providing an existing gas cylinder with a handwheel an open/close status and gas consumption data to a user or a cloud data center comprising: the smart gas cylinder cap comprising: a gas cylinder valve handwheel engagement holder positioned over the existing handwheel of the gas cylinder, an electronic circuitry (120) with a mechanical micro-switch (121) positioned on the handwheel engagement holder, a Bluetooth iBeacon data broadcasting module provided on the electronic circuitry of the handheld engagement holder, a lithium ion coin battery mounted on the electronic circuitry; a replacement handwheel (101) provided on top of the handwheel engagement holder with two mechanical display windows (103); wherein, the electronic circuitry is enclosed between the replacement handwheel and the handwheel engagement holder, the MEMS mass flowmeter (500) comprising: a central metrology (301) unit; wherein the central metrology unit comprising: a MEMS sensing chip which is assembled to a flow channel; and a printed circuit board (PCB) circuitry (310) comprising: a central process unit (CPU), a Bluetooth data acquisition module enabled or disabled by the central process unit (CPU) in the PCB circuitry (310); and a wireless data acquisition module enabled or disabled by the central process unit (CPU) in the PCB circuitry (310). |
| Claim: |
2. The smart gas cylinder cap system of claim 1 , wherein the gas cylinder valve handwheel engagement holder is made of hard metal with spring properties selected from options of hard stainless steel, aluminum alloy, or hard plastics; in order to assure applicable engagement for most existing mechanical handwheels on gas cylinders, shape of the gas cylinder valve handwheel engagement holder that is in direct contact with existing mechanical handwheel is having its one half with a petal shape and another half with a rounded shape; the petal shape is to match or grasp any handwheel shape while the rounded shape is to press tightly against the mechanical handwheels of gas cylinders; a plural number of set screws are symmetrically distributed at the half of rounded shape of the engagement holder to engage on the original mechanical handwheel of gas cylinder. |
| Claim: |
3. The smart gas cylinder cap system of claim 1 , wherein the Bluetooth iBeacon data broadcasting module of the smart gas cylinder cap is triggered by the mechanical micro-switch which is benefited by no need of additional power consumption; the Bluetooth iBeacon data broadcasting module is wirelessly connected to the central process unit (CPU) of the MEMS flow meter that can be used to program desired information of each gas cylinder including one of a serial number, a valve position and applicable gases; the Bluetooth iBeacon data broadcasting module is powered by the lithium ion battery to provide power for a period of time. |
| Claim: |
4. The smart gas cylinder cap system of claim 1 , wherein the replacement handwheel includes a color barcode of two colors that are used to represent status of the gas cylinder for an onsite operator. |
| Claim: |
5. The smart gas cylinder cap system of claim 1 , wherein the replacement handwheel includes a plural number of openings close to the Bluetooth data acquisition module such that iBeacon Bluetooth data transmission will not be blocked; the openings are distributed symmetrically; the handwheel is made of one of a hard plastic materials or light metal. |
| Claim: |
6. The smart gas cylinder cap system of claim 1 , wherein the cylinder valve handwheel engagement holder made as a base unit can be directly placed on the existing handwheel of the gas cylinder; the base unit can be made with a mechanical cuboids that can directly engage with a stem of the gas cylinder handwheel to reduce weight and height of the smart gas cylinder cap. |
| Claim: |
7. The smart gas cylinder cap system of claim 1 , wherein the Bluetooth iBeacon data broadcasting module can be replaced with an RFID alternative approach; the RFID is in dual code mode or with two RFIDs; one has a code to represent for open status of the gas cylinder and another code to represent for empty status of the gas cylinder. |
| Claim: |
8. The smart gas cylinder cap system of claim 7 , wherein the RFID of the smart gas cylinder cap can go into sleep mode in order to keep lower power consumption. |
| Claim: |
9. The smart gas cylinder cap system of claim 1 , wherein the MEMS mass flow meter is operated by one of a calorimetric measurement principle or by other measurement principles including one of time-of-flight or thermal anemometry. |
| Claim: |
10. The smart gas cylinder cap system of claim 1 , wherein the MEMS sensing chip is placed and assembled in a bypass gas channel inside the metrology unit, which can make the MEMS mass flow meter compact and beneficial for higher flow measurement. |
| Claim: |
11. The smart gas cylinder cap system of claim 1 , wherein the Bluetooth data acquisition module has low power consumption characteristics; the central process unit (CPU) that acquires metrology data from the MEMS sensing chip is also used to enable or disable the Bluetooth data acquisition module to acquire the data from the Bluetooth iBeacon data broadcasting module of the smart gas cylinder cap, and it can also go into sleep mode in order to keep lower power consumption. |
| Claim: |
12. The smart gas cylinder cap system of claim 1 , wherein the wireless data transmission module can go into sleep mode in order to keep lower power consumption. |
| Claim: |
13. The smart gas cylinder cap system of claim 1 , wherein protocols for the wireless data transmission module can be selected from one of LoRa, NB-IoT, GSM, Sigfox or WIFI. |
| Claim: |
14. The smart gas cylinder cap system of claim 1 , wherein the smart gas cylinder cap can be a single or a plural number; the smart gas cylinder cap system only requires one MEMS mass flow meter to work functionally. |
| Patent References Cited: |
8342018 January 2013 Huang |
| Primary Examiner: |
Patel, Harshad R |
| Accession Number: |
edspgr.10837814 |
| Database: |
USPTO Patent Grants |
