A basic prototype of an Air Recycling Cleaner was tested at Intertek in 2005. The outcome was that a prototype cleaner using air recycling technology can outperform a 1,400 Watt vacuum cleaner.

In 2008 an Ecovacuum project held at Brussels reported that vacuum cleaners are using too much electricity and they are hoping to cap the amount of input electricity that cleaners are allowed to use.
 

INTERTEK - ETL SEMCO Research & Testing Centre on behalf of the DTI and the Market Transformation Programme made tests on a prototype Air Recycling Cleaner. The conclusion was that the Air recycling cleaner using only 250 Wh worked better than a 1,400 watt Hoover vacuum cleaner. Since these tests were made at Intertek a dedicated Brush Bar motor has been fitted to a prototype ARC greatly improving the performance. Now apart from some cosmetic work the Air Recycling Cleaner is now ready to be manufactured.
 

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It is worth remembering that the above prototype was constructed from an old model end of line vacuum cleaner that had been in use for some years before the above tests were made.
 

The results of the test confirmed the prediction that the Air Recycling Cleaner, or Captive Air-flow Cleaner, has many advantages over the Vacuum Cleaner.
 

This is because the air stream speed no longer has to rely solely on the ambient air pressure of 14 lbs per square inch in order to supply air back into the system. It is instead being force-fed by the returning exhaust air at a far greater pressure. It also does not blow contaminated air back into the room to disturb dust that can settle in inaccessible places.
 

Even though the prototype was constructed from an old bag type vacuum cleaner the tests demonstrated that the prototype Air Recycling Cleaner when using only 250 watts out performed the new Hoover model U3470 that was running at 1,400 watts.
 

This leads to the idea that if a Cyclone cleaner was converted to an Air Recycling Cleaner but still retaining the cyclone dust separator it will be an improvement on the latest top of the range Cyclone Vacuum cleaners.
 

With this end in view a number of cyclone cleaners where purchased to investigate the possibility of converting them into air recycling cleaners.
 

Finally two of the Cyclone cleaners were chosen as being the most suitable for conversion one was a Dyson Cyclone and the other was an Electrolux Cyclone. As the exercise was only to demonstrate that it was possible to improve on the efficiency of any cleaner by implementing the air recycling technology little attention was given to the appearance of the new prototypes.
 

Both of the new prototypes worked well and it was immediately obvious that the modified cleaners would run on extremely low power. By placing a small polystyrene ball into the cup of each cleaner it could be seen that the balls rotated faster in the new prototype air recycling version than in the unmodified machine. This indicates that the air speed in the modified cleaners was increased. The pictures at the top of this page show both of the modified cyclone Air Recycling Cleaners.
 

The performance of the modified Electrolux was better than the Dyson cleaner. This is because it has a larger intake port which reduces the restriction of air intake from the cleaning head allowing a faster air stream.
 

The blue box in the picture is a variable mains transformer ( variac ) and is used to reduce power to the cleaners during tests. This allows the machines to be run down to 100 watts during experiments. A small electronic speed control is used in the working prototypes.
 

Some reluctance appears to exist with manufacturers about moving away from the vacuum cleaner in favour of the air recycling cleaner. So I have now designed a cleaner that uses an air routing valve to make it possible to quickly convert from an air recycling cleaner into a vacuum cleaner.
 

Preliminary designs have been produced and patent applications have now been filed for a Dual Mode Cleaner.
 

Ben Edginton © 2005
(c) 2009