Ideafile Number 3

Improved Vacuum Cleaner

Peter N. Glaskowsky

Summary

I've never been very impressed by today's vacuum cleaners. I think their relative ineffectiveness is behind the popularity of those carpet cleaners that use a water spray and powerful suction. This idea is just a simplification of those devices, using high-pressure air instead of water. It won't be quite as effective, but it won't require any drying time, either. It should be as easy to use as a conventional vacuum cleaner, but substantially more effective on carpeting.

Overview

The essential element of this idea is the replacement of the normal rotating beater bar in a vacuum cleaner's carpet head with a series of air jets or a linear air knife. The second interesting change is to the air movement mechanism. In today's vacuum cleaners, air is drawn in through the head, passed through a filter bag to catch dirt and lint, and exhausted into the ambient air. This would be replaced by a closed-loop system, where air is drawn in through the head, filtered, then pumped back out to the air jets or air knife in the head.

Features

While this isn't exactly a complex idea, there are some interesting points worth further description.

• Air jets

The air jets have to be powerful enough to dislodge as much soil as a regular beater bar would. The key advantage of jets over a beater bar is in the the jets' ability to lift up the dirt and get it into the air so it can get sucked into the vacuum cleaner. I would expect that the friction of carpet fibers rubbing against each other under the air jets would compensate for the lack of the beater bar.

An alternative to the jets would be an "air knife", a linear air jet that could create a more even effect across the width of the head. I suppose someone would have to do some experiments to figure this out. I know I won't. :-)

• Suction

The ability of the air jets to lift dirt out of the carpet can be a definite disadvantage if the air is not immediately sucked into the vacuum cleaner. Accordingly, the jets must be accomodated by a suction mechanism that pulls in more air than the jets push out. This maintains suction around the edge of the head and keeps the dirt from being blown out into the ambient air.

• Blower Motor

The motor for this sort of vacuum cleaner would hopefully achieve better airflow than a comparably-powered motor in a regular vacuum cleaner, since the whole system is a closed loop. Well, not completely closed... the need to have a slight surplus of suction at the head probably means venting some air from the motor output before it gets to the head.