Scavenge (pronounced skav-inj)
(1) To take or gather (something hopefully usable) from
discarded material.
(2) To cleanse of filth, as in cleaning a street (in the
UK “scavenger” was once a term for a municipal street sweeper).
(3) In internal combustion engines (1) to expel burnt
gases from a cylinder
(4) As “oil scavenger”, a device used to remove excess or
unwanted oil from certain areas of various types of engine.
(5) In metallurgy, to purify molten metal by introducing
a substance, usually by bubbling a suitable gas through it (the gas may be
inert or may react with the impurities).
(6) In democratic politics (in preferential voting
systems), to negotiate with other candidates or party machines to obtain preferences
(usually on a swap basis).
(7) To act as a scavenger; to search (applied especially
to creatures which look for food among the carrion killed by others).
(8) In chemistry, to act as a scavenger (for atoms,
molecules, ions, radicals, etc).
(9) In historical UK use, a child employed to pick up
loose cotton from the floor in a cotton mill.
1635–45: A back formation from scavenger, from the Middle
English scavager, from the Anglo-Norman
scawageour (one who had to do with scavage, inspector, tax collector), from
the Old Northern French scawage &
escauwage (scavenge) and the Old
French scavage & escavage, an alteration of escauvinghe (the Medieval Latin
forms were scewinga & sceawinga), from the Old Dutch scauwōn (to inspect, to examine, to look
at). The verb scavenge in the 1640s was
first a transitive verb in the sense of “cleanse from filth” while the intransitive
meaning “search through rubbish for usable food or objects” was in use at least
by the 1880s and the idea of “extracting & collecting anything usable from
discarded material” dates from 1922. Scavenge
is a verb, scavenged, scavengering & scavenging are verbs & adjectives,
scavengeable is an adjective and scavenger & scavengerism are nouns; the
noun plural is scavengers.
Lindsay Lohan: Fear of scavengers.
The noun scavenger dates
from the 1540s and described originally “a person hired to remove refuse from
streets” (a job which would come later to be known as a “street sweeper”, a modification
of the late fourteenth century Middle English scavager & scawageour,
the title of the employee of London city who originally was charged with
collecting tax on goods sold by foreign merchants. The origin of that title was the Middle
English scavage & scauage, from the circa 1400 Anglo-French
scawage (toll or duty exacted by a
local official on goods offered for sale in one's precinct), from the Old North
French escauwage (inspection), from a
Germanic source (it was related to the Old High German scouwon and the Old English sceawian
(to look at, inspect) and from the same lineage came the modern English “show”. In the 1590s it came into use in zoology to
refer to creatures which look for food among the carrion killed by others. The game of “scavenger hunt” seems to have
gained the name in 1937 and one form of the word which went extinct was scavagery (street-cleaning, removal of
filth from streets), noted in 1851.
Oil scavenge systems
In an internal combustion engine, an oil scavenger is a
device used to remove excess or unwanted oil from certain areas of the engine,
typically from the bottom of the engine's crankcase or oil pan. The oil scavenger can help to prevent excessive
oil pressure or foaming, something to be avoided because in high-performance
engines operating under extreme conditions, excessive pressure can collapse
pistons, a destructive process. The core
of the system is a scavenge-pump (some even suction mechanisms) which draw the
excess oil from the engine and directs it back into the oil pan or an external
reservoir.
Internal combustion engine with dry sump and oil scavenging system.
The classic use of oil salvage is in dry sump lubrication
systems in which the oil that is supplied by the pressure pump drains off the
engine as a frothy, thoroughly-mixed air-oil suspension into a relatively
shallow, low-capacity, sump that is often contoured around the rotating
crankshaft-assembly. In this system,
there are several scavenge pump stages that pump the aerated oil from the “dry”
sump and into the external oil tank that has the dual-assignment of (1) storing
the major amount of the engine oil supply and (2) de-aerating the mixture being
returned by the scavenge pump(s). After lubricating
the various components, the oil flows into the sump at the bottom of the engine
and from here the scavenge stages of the pump retrieves the highly-aerated oil,
delivering the mix through a filter and then to a centrifugal and
boundary-layer air-oil separation system in the oil tank. The air extracted
from the scavenge oil exits the system through the breather and the result is
cool, clean oil into the external tank ready for recirculation.
Aircraft turbine engine with oil scavenging system.
Oil salvage systems are especially critical in
aviation. In car engines, used oil is
able to drain down into the oil pan, where it can be circulated back through
the engine or cooling system but at altitude, gravity or air pressure may not
be sufficient for oil to drain on its own and for these reasons aircraft are
equipped with scavenge pumps to help pull the used oil out of the engine into a
reservoir for cooling, de-aerating, and recirculation. In hard-to-empty areas that are far from the
oil sump (like the rear of the engine) a scavenge pump prevents the pooling of
used oil. The aircraft scavenge pump
system does not have its own power source, but operates on a designated line
from the main electrical system and on bigger aircraft powered by turbines with
large oil capacity, as many as six scavenge pumps may operate in unison.
No comments:
Post a Comment