Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/219

 A Street Cleaner Built Like a Carpet Sweeper

��Cleaning two hundred thousand square yards of pavement in eight hours

���Nozzle

��THE motor-driven vacuum street clean- er shown in the accompanying illus- tration is built on exactly the same principle as that of the ordinary household carpet sweeper. It differs from others of a similar type in that every par- ticle of the dust and dirt picked up is retained in the vehicle storage bin. This is ac- complished by passing the air sucked up with the dust through a water seal. The passage of the dust- 1 ad en air through the seal filters it so that when expelled from the apparatus it is clean and pure just like the outer air after a rain storm.

The vehicle is entirely self-contained. It sweeps the street, picks up the dust and dirt, deposits it automatically in its storage bin and can finally run to the point of dis- posal or have its load of sweepings trans- ferred to other vehicles to conserve its own time for the cleaning operation.

While the sweeping and picking up oh he load is entirely automatic, the method em- ployed is very simple. The apparatus con- sists of a conventional motor truck chassis on which are mounted a two-part storage bin, a blower driven by a separate gasoline engine and a header or funnel-shaped pas- sageway by means of which the dirt is sucked up off the ground and transferred to the blower from whence it is forced in the two-part bin.

The blower and its direct-connected gas engine are mounted transversely of. the frame directly behind the driver's seat un-

���der a light metal cover. At the bottom the funnel-shaped header spreads out into a long suction box in close contact with the ground and supported on chains for raising or lowering as required. Air and dirt on the street are sucked through this header

Cleaned-outairtc Almost clean* into the Center of the

atmosphere outoftopbm blower as the latter IS

Rear door for revolved. It

is thrown out at the peri- phery of the blower into a rectangular pipe leadingto the top of the storage bin. The latter is divided into two parts by a horizontal partition.

As the air enters the top portion it swirls around and deposits the greater portion of the dirt on the bottom of the upper com- partment. The air is then drawn out and carried down into a small bottomless pan with its lower edges below the surface of several inches of water in the lower compart- ment. The partly-cleaned air has to pass down through the water and up on the out- side of the pan before it is led to a pipe open to the atmosphere directly aft of the driver's seat on the side opposite the blower. The air is thus washed and freed of its dust before it is allowed to escape. The dirt collected is taken out through doors in each compartment at the rear.

This type of cleaner prevents the scat- tering of dust through the air and is cheaper and quicker than the old hand method or the broom and flushing method. It will clean two hundred thousand square yards of pavement in eight hours. Another advantage is that it does not make the streets slippery as does the water flushing.

��The street-cleaner motor truck consists of a two-part bin, a blower, and a funnel shaped passageway through which dirt is sucked in. At left is shown a section of the brush and its nozzle

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