Working together with an employee from the local school board, Mostafa Mehdizadeh from Düsseldorf-based AWISTA has developed a novel vacuum tube for an electrical leaf blower vacuum. This new system is not only easy-to-use but also good for the environment and gentle on the ears.
Whether it be blossom and pollen in the spring, leaves dropped by dry trees in the summer or the standard fallen leaves in the autumn: leaf blower vacuums are used for tidying up paths and green areas all year round. In 2022, almost 400 tonnes of leaves were collected using leaf blower vacs in Düsseldorf, a city that is home to around 630,000 inhabitants.
Many of the blower vacuums being used to clean up parks and pavements are still petrol run. The City of Düsseldorf has decided that all of the blower vacs deployed at its schools should be run on electricity by the end of 2023. This will not only make them lighter and quieter – they will also be better for the climate.
Great PPP team work
Part of the solution has now been delivered by a team working at the joint venture company owned by the City of Düsseldorf and REMONDIS – exactly the way a public private partnership should operate. “We worked on it for three years,” Mostafa Mehdizadeh from AWISTA told the Rheinische Post newspaper. Mehdizadeh has worked at the company for many years and is in charge of its cleaning equipment.
Working together with Christian Wegner from the school board, he developed a novel collecting system for an electrical leaf blower vacuum. They explained to the region’s largest newspaper how this new piece of equipment will make this hot and physical work easier.
Two successful inventors
The problem: the bag connected to the blower vacuum gets really heavy, especially when the leaves are wet. It is, therefore, hard physical work for his colleagues just to empty the bags. What’s more, leaf blowing can also create a lot of dust.
The solution: a special vacuum tube that is not connected to a collecting bag but goes straight into a special bin. The bins are easy to move around as they have wheels, no more dust is created and the colleagues no longer have to empty the 240-litre collecting bag.
A filter mat has been attached to the top of the 1,100-litre black bin. “The filter has approximately the same effect as an FFP2 mask,” explained Mehdizadeh. The air pressure also presses and compacts the leaves in the bin.
Two successful inventors: Christian Wegner from Düsseldorf’s school board and Mostafa Mehdizadeh from AWISTA collaborated to further develop an electrical leaf blower vacuum to make the work easier and more climate friendly
And there’s more to come…
Up to now, Wegner and Mehdizadeh’s invention has only been used in Düsseldorf. Around 95 such blower vacs are currently being deployed around the city.
The invention has been registered at the Patent Office as a utility model. The City of Düsseldorf and the manufacturer of the blower vacuum own the rights to the invention. And Wegner and Mehdizadeh have already begun working on new ways to optimise the electrical leaf blower vacs – exactly how a PPP team should operate.
Image credits: image 1: Adobe Stock: Аrtranq; image 2: © Ralf Böhme, AWISTA
