Abstract
Although it is well known that carpets collect particles and other dirt and can be source of contamination of indoor environment, very little analysis have been done on the relation of carpets and indoor environment and cleaning effect of vacuum cleaners on floor carpets.
This paper made, firstly, theoretical analysis of collection and removal characteristics of vacuum cleaners on carpets, secondly, experimentally determined residual and collection rate of test dust on three types of floor coverings, two types of carpets and ‘tatami’, traditional Japanese floor covering, and, thirdly, deduced an equation to estimate the residual contaminants in the carpets.
The results show that 20 to 30% of contaminants is left in the structure of carpets after vacuum cleaning only. It is difficult to remove 100% of contaminants only with vacuum cleaning and necessary to use other methods such as washing with solutions for complete removal.
