If you’ve ever been behind a street sweeper for any amount of time, you might find your curiosity piqued. How does this giant, noisy vehicle work?
They may be slow, but street sweepers have a rich history of innovation and provide a valuable service to your city. Let’s dive into the basics of street cleaning.
What Do Street Sweepers Do?
Street sweepers (or street cleaners) have been around since the mid-1800s. The earliest models were horse-drawn, but purposed components still used in street cleaners today like brushes and hoppers.
Roads often get the brunt of litter. If that debris isn’t collected, rainwater carries it to the nearest lake or river and endangers the ecosystem. Street sweepers were designed to combat this problem while keeping streets maintained.
Street sweeping equipment comes in a variety of styles, but they all serve the purpose of gathering up street debris.
Types of Street Cleaners
There are three main types of street sweepers you may come across, and all have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Mechanical Broom Street Sweeper
The mechanical broom was part of the first model and is still found in the most commonly used cleaning vehicles.
Mechanical broom sweepers clean the street with several large spinning brushes. These brushes sweep debris in a single direction towards a dustpan-like feature under the cleaner. When the debris is collected in the pan, it is transported up an elevator into the hopper to be disposed of later.
This street cleaner works very well for larger, coarse material, but only tends to disturb finer dirt particles. These particles tend to make a large dust cloud around the cleaner and seem counter-intuitive to the cleaning process.
Vacuum Street Sweeper
Vacuum sweepers display the next level of innovation for street cleaners. These vehicles have spinning brushes to clean the pavement but use a vacuum to collect fugitive debris (the amazing name for dirt that gets kicked up in the cleaning process).
Studies show that most trash and road debris accumulates within a meter of the curb. For this reason, vacuum street sweepers have been designed to be most effective for cleaning that small section of the street.
While the vacuum does a better job at seizing fugitive debris than the mechanical broom sweeper, it still can’t collect all of it. Enter the regenerative air sweeper.
Regenerative Air Street Sweepers
While this model functions similarly to the vacuum sweeper, it has a special feature that sets it apart. Regenerative air sweepers have spinning brushes and suck up debris, but that air is then recycled through a filter to blast the pavement and loosen dirt for collection. This model is exemplary for cleaning an entire lane and better at removing small particles than its predecessors.
Salute the Sweeper
So the next time you see one of your friendly neighborhood street sweepers, give the driver a wave--that sweeper is doing its part to make the world a cleaner place.
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