When you are indoors in hot weather it is normal to crank the air conditioning up or at least switch on a fan. However, what about suffering from the heat when you are outside, say at a picnic. Donaldson thought of the idea while watching baseball on a hot day while sitting next to a cooler full of cold drinks. He took an idea normally used to warm houses and applied it instead to the outdoors.
Heat exchangers work by putting outlets for warm but stale air next to inlets for cold, fresh air. The pipes run along each other so that the outgoing air warms the incoming air.
The 34 litre capacity cooler can hold up to 49 cans as well as ice topped up with about 2 litres of water. A battery powers a fan which draws air into the radiator. The air coming out, either by vents or via a hose, makes the air outside up to 20 degrees C cooler. The batteries last for 2.5 hours on a high setting or 6 hours on low.
A World Patent application was published in September 2013 as Ice air conditioner, and its main drawing is shown below.
When I showed patent specifications to clients, I always placed much emphasis on search reports -- the list compiled by patent examiners at patent offices of relevant patents and other published material. The final pages of the Donaldson application contain a report, which lists first US7188489. It works in the same general way -- a portable cooling device using a heat exchanger. The search reports in many European, and the World, patent systems use X and Y indications to show that a particular claim is anticipated (X) or is obvious (Y) in light of the cited document. American search reports, which are on the front of the granted patents, simply cite patents -- often very many -- without giving the X and Y indications.
The IcyBreeze company is pricing models from $279 and plans to begin shipping from August 2014.
Much of the above is taken from the Gizmag article on the IcyBreeze.
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