The Almost No Water Required Washing Machine

Technocrat

The Almost No Water Required Washing Machine

zogger

Mon Jul 21 18:16:00 -0700 2008

Chemistry.

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A process for cleaning most textiles that was invented at Leeds University is now gong to be developed for commercial purposes. They claim their new method will use as little as 2% of the water used in typical clothes washing machines, with a similar reduction in energy use for reducing hot water and drying energy demands, and could replace a lot of traditional dry cleaning as well.

The process is based on the use of plastic granules (or chips) which are tumbled with the clothes to remove stains. A range of tests, carried out according to worldwide industry protocols to prove the technology performs to the high standards expected in the cleaning industry, show the process can remove virtually all types of everyday stains as effectively as existing processes whilst leaving clothes as fresh as normal washing. In addition, the clothes emerge from the process almost dry, reducing the need for tumble-dryers. FWIW, Xeros, not much there really. With that said, I sure hope it works as advertised, being able to save lebenty billion gallons of water a year is a good idea.

The Almost No Water Required Washing Machine

Bruce Perens

Mon Jul 21 18:40:05 -0700 2008
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You only need as much water as necessary to wet the clothes, so you can displace the rest with little plastic media from your vibratory rock tumbler. But can the process remove the plastic granules? Or do you have to scoop them out of every cuff and pocket? Oh, that's a bug, eh? Let's see if they can fix that will a zillion-dollar investment.

The Almost No Water Required Washing Machine

John Dalton

Mon Jul 21 19:52:58 -0700 2008
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I hear by patent a method for cleaning clothes with polymer encased ferrous particles and removing said particles from laundry with a magnetic field.

Here's their patent by the way.

The Almost No Water Required Washing Machine

The Baron

Tue Jul 22 06:59:52 -0700 2008
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You're still gonna have a lot of those particles stuck in your pockets.

The other big question I would have is how much duress is this putting on the fabric of the clothes. A typical washing machine and dryer beats the living hell out your clothes, leaving them clean and soft, yes, but also wearing them out much faster.

When my ex and I separated I went through a time when I didn't have access to washer and dryer (well, I wasn't willing to sit in a public laundromat anyway), and so ended up getting everything done at a local dry cleaners, with bundle service for socks, etc. This lasted about six months, and I was amazed at how well my clothes were standing up to daily wear and tear. I'm a 'field and bench' engineer not so much a 'sit at the desk' one, so I used to see a lot of fraying at the cuffs, wear on the elbows and knees, and seams wearing out and giving way. Typical dress shirt lasted 7-9 months, with pants a bit longer. Now that I dry clean all my dress shirts and pants, I'm getting three to four times as much wear out of them.

I can't imagine that this new process is going to be any gentler on clothes than a standard washer.

The Almost No Water Required Washing Machine

Timothy Brownawell

Mon Jul 21 19:44:02 -0700 2008
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What happens if you fall in a mud puddle, or someone throws up on you, or you're just dripping wet from being outside in the heat all day? Or does the "virtually all types of everyday stains" have an implicit "city-dwelling indoor-working grown-ups without small children only" attached?

The Almost No Water Required Washing Machine

Bruce Perens

Mon Jul 21 19:52:09 -0700 2008
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My dishwasher has a water turbidity sensor. It flushes water through the cycle until it's not turbid any longer.

The Almost No Water Required Washing Machine

Thomas Lord

Tue Jul 22 09:32:49 -0700 2008
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Recent model Maytag with a flat front control panel, per chance? With that nice extra-deep well, optional water-heating, etc?

If so, have you noticed any flakiness with the control panel and/or controller? We did (mostly, more or less fixed by removing, lightly cleaning, and re-seating the ribbon-cable connectors). I did notice that the connector was a falling off when I opened it up. I found this, though, by web-searching the various help sites and it seems to be common for the cables to fail that way and for the controller to simply fail (requiring a new board -- I think around $70, but I'm not sure). I think they didn't insulate that compartment well enough from water vapor and temperature.

New rule for designers of big home "appliances":

Thou shalt document the control bus and state machine of the device. Thou shalt expose that raw bus at a convenient location with the absolute minimum amount of logic needed to protect an external driver from putting the bus in an "illegal" (potentially damaging or dangerous) state. Thou shalt use standard connectors for that external port to the bus.

That will bring on good integration of appliances with home control networks faster than 100 executive-level "partnerships" with MSFT or whomever. And, it'll make things like flaky controller boards or control panels far easier and less expensive to hack around, thus lowering the cost of ownership (for, what, maybe $10 added to initial cost? $20?).

-t

The Almost No Water Required Washing Machine

Uncle Entity

Mon Jul 21 23:51:00 -0700 2008
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What happens if you fall in a mud puddle, or someone throws up on you, or you're just dripping wet from being outside in the heat all day?

Average day at the bar in Phoenix?

If they can remove axle grease from blue jeans then color me impressed.

prior art

rubycodez

Mon Jul 21 21:14:20 -0700 2008
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that's a lot like my invention for washing the pellets from my rock / brass tumbler with a lot less water, just throw in enough laundry

The Almost No Water Required Washing Machine

AB3A

Tue Jul 22 04:02:12 -0700 2008
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Ok, let's say for the sake of argument that this crazy scheme actually works.

Washing clothes is a substantial part of a typical household's waste-water. Something like this would change the character of the wastewater substantially. We'd have to re-engineer the processes at most waste-water treatment plants.

Such an event wouldn't be a bad thing, but it would cause an awful lot of water use agreements to have to be re-negotiated, plants to be redesigned, and sludge contracts to change. The costs, in other words, aren't just embedded in the cost of the water upstream...

The Almost No Water Required Washing Machine

Adam R

Tue Jul 22 04:30:55 -0700 2008
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I notice that the patent says "The results obtained are very much in line with those observed when carrying out conventional dry cleaning".

You wouldn't dry clean a pair of jeans covered in oil and expect the oil to get removed, so I guess this wouldn't get the oil off either.

Adam.

The Almost No Water Required Washing Machine

AB3A

Tue Jul 22 05:21:13 -0700 2008
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Actually, if we were to remove the washing effort completely it would still change the character of the waste-water process.

My point is that, provided that we can recycle the water efficiently (with today's technology, the water leaving most Enhanced Nutrient Removal waste-water plants is of better quality than the drinking water we put in the pipes for human consumption), the only additional cost of water filtration is that of moving it around. And as long as the waste and drinking water plants aren't separated by too much altitude, this cost isn't particularly high.

The point I'm getting at is that the savings here is a relatively small amount of energy, and that it could trigger an awful lot of re-engineering. Speaking as one who makes his living designing, building, and maintaining such systems, I wouldn't mind the work. I have to point out, however, that there are more significant advances to be had elsewhere.