US Patent Issued to Texas Instruments on June 17 for "Sensing frost and ice accumulation using capacitance" (German Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,332,204, issued on June 17, was assigned to Texas Instruments Inc. (Dallas).

"Sensing frost and ice accumulation using capacitance" was invented by Bjoern Oliver Eversmann (Zolling, Germany), Andreas Felix Martin Kraemer (Eichenau, Germany) and Michael Seidl (Freising, Germany).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A capacitance sensing system senses frost and ice accumulation in an energy efficient defrost system. The capacitance sensing system comprises a first capacitor including a portion of a metal heat exchanger and a sensor electrode electrically isolated from the metal heat exchanger; a tank oscillator including a second capacitor and an...