Oil purifying means employed in connection with internal combustion engines

Claim 1

An oil purifying unit for incorporation in an internal combustion engine, which engine has an exhaust line for discharging hot exhaust gases produced as an incident of its operation, and contaminates with water and fuel the lubricating oil employed by it, said unit comprising, when so incorporated, a prismatic box-like structure which is divided into a. an upper engine oil transmitting and purifying, water and fuel evaporating chamber, interposed in an oil return line of the engine and having a high oil intake port at an oil intake end, a low oil discharge port at the opposite or oil discharge end, and a vapor discharge port for disposing of vapors produced in said chamber, through which chamber the engine oil may be caused to travel in a broad, thin layer by gravity from end to end under flow conditions which are essentially identical from side to side of the chamber, and b. a lower hot-exhaust-gas-transmitting, heat supplying chamber interposed in an exhaust bypass line of the engine said heat supplying chamber having widely separated intake and discharge ports for the hot exhaust gases located, respectively, in an upstanding wall and in the floor, of the chamber, the crosssection of said lower heat supplying chamber being larger than the cross-section of the intake and discharge ports, c. the division of the box-like structure into upper and lower chambers being effected by a thin, generally flat, imperforate, metallic dividing wall which forms a heat transmitting floor for heating the upper chamber and a roof for the lower chamber, and which extends evenly from side to side of the box-like structure throughout its length, but slopes downward continuously and uniformly from the oil intake end of the upper chamber to a level at the oil discharge end thereof, not substantially below the lower extremity of the oil discharge port, the unit being further characterized by the fact that oilspreading, damming means are provided at intervals along the upper surface of the sloping dividing wall for prolonging the transmission of the oil through the upper chamber, for collecting the oil in a succession of shallow pools, and for promoting uniformity of oil distribution throughout the width of the upper chamber, each of which damming means extends at an even and uniform height throughout the width of the upper chamber.