Beating the carpet : Developing an active vacuum cleaner nozzlefor high carpet performance using less energy

Sammanfattning:

The power use of vacuum cleaners accounts for a substantial share of the total energy

demand in the European Union. This partly due to the common notion associating good

vacuum cleaner performance to high input power. To regulate this European Commission

will introduce a energy labeling standard from September 2014 that will enforce a power cap

for vacuum cleaners and classify them according to energy efficiency, cleaning performance,

dust-emission and sound power level. One company currently trying to adapt their products

to this label is Electrolux. The one performance criterion that is currently the furthest from

being reached is the level of dust pick up on carpet (

dpuc). Traditionally, motorized vacuum

cleaner nozzles with agitators, so called active nozzles, pick up more dust on carpet than

other (passive) nozzles.

The aim of this thesis has been to investigate whether it is possible for an Electrolux canister

vacuum cleaner system to achieve the highest energy efficiency class –

A to A+++ – while

maintaining a good cleaning performance – class

C or better – on carpet. This was done by

constructing an active nozzle which performed well on carpet on low input power. An

Electrolux active nozzle was adapted to function better with lower airflows and less vacuum.

Several prototypes of different agitators were developed and tested in the nozzle according to

industry standard testing methods.

It was concluded from testing that it was possible to reach the higher classes – A to A+++ –

in energy efficiency while maintaining a good cleaning performance class.