Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Invent Ultrasonic Dryer That Uses Sound To Dry Your Clothes (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Yahoo: Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have developed a dryer that could make doing laundry much quicker. Called the ultrasonic dryer, it's expected to be up to five times more energy efficient than most conventional dryers and able dry a large load of clothes in about half the time. Instead of using heat the way most dryers do, the ultrasonic dryer relies on high-frequency vibrations. Devices called green transducers convert electricity into vibrations, shaking the water from clothes. The scientists say that this method will allow a medium load of laundry to dry in 20 minutes, which is significantly less time than the average 50 minutes it takes in many heat-based machines. The drying technology also leaves less lint behind than normal dryers do, since the majority of lint is created when the hot air stream blows tiny fibers off of clothing. Drying clothes without heat also reduces the chance that their colors will fade. While the ultrasonic dryer has been in development for the past couple of years, the U.S. Department of Energy explains in a published video that it has recently been "developed into a full-scale press dryer and clothes dryer drum -- setting the stage for it to one day go to market through partners like General Electric Appliances."
Depending on the frequency, this should drive your family dog totally insane.
I wonder how my lungs are doing now that I've worn hang-dried clothes with all those evil fibers for decades...
I don't get this. I actually just put a load in the washer, and in three hours it'll be done (says the thing). Then I'll hang it all out to dry.
Now I understand that stateside having clothes hang outside is a sure sign of poverty. While I'm certainly not rich, there is no such stigma here. And anyway, clothing hangs pretty well on an indoors rack too. It just takes a night or so, which is fine by me. I even turn down the spin cycle speed to go easy on the clothes, something dryers very much don't do.
So while this ultranoisy thing is probably wonderful progress and everything, I don't really understand the problem in the first place. Maybe I'm just not first world enough.
They had a commercial with several celebrities showing energy efficient appliances. "Which will be available soon." Jo Anne Worley proudly displayed a washer that worked with sound waves. Hence, not needing a dryer or detergent. Which was funny considering how many different detergents she did ads for. Whatever happened to that 'modern' marvel?
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
here are no tangible benefits to using a crazy ultrasound dryer.
"up to five times more energy efficient than most conventional dryers"
It's the second sentence in the summary for god's sake. You didn't even have to click the link or read the article to get to it.
Cool... cause it's not hot... Yes, I know. I can't resist, no matter how terrible the joke.
even more efficient. OK: it doesn't work all year round where I live, so in cool months I hang my clothes on a drying rack in a spare room.
It was stated it consumes less energy, does not produce unnecessary heat.. I get you are fine with your current machine, but why shouldn't we improve what we have?
We should look to improve on what we have.
The problem is often how we go about introducing it. This will likely be a considerable disruptive move within the industry that has made traditional heat-based machines for decades now. A monopoly driven into the industry secured by patents may not prove to be a benefit for all those employed in the industry. For consumers, neither will a $5000 price tag.
If you've been wearing the same crusty underwear for a week, you aren't a regular consumer.
It is definitely and objectively better to blow the loose fibers out of the clothes with a traditional dryer and dispose of them
How many of those fibers were already loose, compared to the ones that get broken off by all the friction in the dryer ?
This will cut down on house fires, which is certainly good.
It's also progress towards something I've wanted for decades: An automatic closet. When I get undressed I want to just toss my clothes at the closet and have it launder, dry, and fold or hang them as appropriate, hopefully doing it quietly enough to not bother my sleep.
I actually don't mind the cleaning and drying part - just a robot to put them away would be awesome.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
So I wash my clothes, then run ultrasonics against/thru them to dry them. And I do this every week (or whatever).
What is the affect on the structural integrity of the fabric? Wouldn't prolonged exposure to intense vibration cause some fibers to break and knits to stretch? Would the ends of fibers tend to fray more quickly?
I don't think I'll be the first on my block to buy one.
In the meantime one could consider a heat-pump clothes dryer. Rather than using electricity or natural gas to heat indoor air, pass it over the clothes, then dump it to the outside in a once-through cycle, a heat-pump dryer uses (as you can guess) a heat pump. The hot side of the heat pump creates warm air that passes over the clothes gathering moisture. The cold side condenses the moisture back out, before passing this de-humidifed air back to the hot side.
Advantages:
Yes, they are more expensive. That is to be expected, considering how dirt-simple the mechanisms of a traditional dryer are. However, depending on your local electricity rates and how much laundry you do, the breakeven should be well within the lifetime of the appliance. Maybe that's not enough to junk a perfectly good existing dryer, but should definitely be considered when purchasing a replacement.
This is very much like the asbestos hysteria. OMG my child is at a school which has an asbestos wall, they'll all die in 40 years!!!!! No. The fibres are inside a sealed bonded sheet. Don't disturb it, don't attempt to remove it, keep it well maintained (reads: painted) and you'll be fine.
AC science in all its glory! This is why we can only have nice things when China starts manufacturing them and selling them to us.
Please, don't buy Chinese-manufactured ACs. Murkin ACs are 50% more A* and every bit as as C, and buying them promotes job growth in the domestic astroturf industry.
* "A" value of Murkin ACs may decrease over time.
This crap is right up there with Teflon and other supposedly good inventions, that only serve to make you pay more, and let U.S. businesses own more custom by the way of patents.
To me, this sentence was a dead giveaway that parent was a parody (that went over a lot of people's heads).
Of course, there's the remote possibility that parent doesn't realize that Teflon is a rare example of a "wonder material" that is virtually irreplaceable for a host of applications including medical devices, scientific research, data transmission, chemical industry, aerospace, mechanical applications,... You never know with Poe's law.
Has anyone done a study of long term effects of prolonged exposure to ultrasonic waves? We humans have a habit of producing something to sell without consideration of long term consequences to the environment...or ourselves.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
After drying cloths, the next steps are washing clothes and showering people like the sonic showers on Star Trek.
So instead 'green pans' and 'copper pans' are all the rage.
To be fair, those green pans where they use a ceramic lining instead of Teflon are actually really amazing. They are wayyyy harder to scratch and just as non-stick. I will never buy a teflon pan again, and I'm not someone who cares at all about the whole fear-mongering.
Presumably it means it can dry five times the laundry use the same amount of energy.
But why would you want thermal energy specifically? We're looking for "drying energy". Sometimes, waiting for water to fall out of a shirt and the rest of the moist to evaporate while at room temperature works.
We could also throw our clothes in a large electric pizza oven at around 300C (I know, this is not a good enough oven for making "real" pizza). I'm sure the pizza oven is better at trapping heat in. But hope your clothes are rugged enough.