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Ultra-low-energy consumption ultrasonic clothes dryer
- ams6110 9y agoA bit puzzled why GE needs government funding to do research -- they make a lot of money already. The idea sounds pretty neat but I wonder about longevity of the piezeoelectric transducers. A clothes dryer needs to last at least 7-10 years, minimum. A resistive heating element is about as simple as you can get, and it's cheap to replace if it does burn out.
- Scoundreller 9y agoAnd the longevity of your clothes.
- MrFoof 9y agoThis is the main reason. The difference in the longevity of my clothes -- same exact articles, same brand, same material, thickness, size and stitching -- from switching from a "hotbox" dryer to condensation dryer was initially amazing. No more did cuffs and collars start to crack and fail, nor did my shirts slowly develop small tears. The latest (2014 is when they really started to hit the market) heat pump dryers dry clothes even cooler still, albeit since they're new tech they're quite a bit more expensive right now. In Europe, a "condensation dryer" is so common, they're just called a "dryer", with no differentiating term. Additionally some countries (Switzerland I think) I believe don't even allow hotbox dryers anymore (and their needed conduit and vents) as part of fire/building code. Condensation dryers simply have a high quality lint filter (that truly does trap it all) and vent to atmosphere, since they just use a heat exchanger. All while using far less electricity than simply heating things resistively.
- pimlottc 9y agoYou said the difference was "/initially/ amazing"; did something change later?
- MBCook 9y agoCould simply be habituation; where, like with HDTV, it's amazing at first but you get used to it and it simply becomes "the normal".
- pimlottc 9y agoPossibly so; it just seemed like a conspicuously odd thing to add given they seemed to have no other complaints about it.
- MrFoof 9y agoNo. After 10 years of using them I've just been acclimated to not having my shirt collars and cuffs destroyed in the dryer.
- sargun 9y agoDo they use the cold side of the heat exchanger to drop the moisture out of the air prior to passing it back through for heating?
- yetihehe 9y agoYes, it works exactly this way. I don't have a clothes dryer, but I have condensing air demoisturizer (for places with too much moisture). Works fine when you need to dry some clothes in one room. Also costs MUCH less than full dryer. Air coming out is only a little hotter than room, but sometimes room gets colder due to evaporation from all textiles.
- sargun 9y agoI've thought about buying an old 200mm or 230mm fan, and hooking it up to a Peltier cooler -- First pass the air over the "cold" side to drop out the moisture, then through some rechargeable desiccant, and then through the hot side to my clothes. I wonder why dryers don't work this way, other than I think that it'd be much slower to dry as compared to a traditional dryer, and I'm not sure if you'd be able to wick the moisture out of ever fabric.
- yetihehe 9y agoWhy rechargeable dessicant when moisture just condenses on cold side? Then it drops into container. Also peltier cooler is too inefficient to do this. It uses about half of energy just for resistive heating. Typical european dryer works just like this but doesn't use dessicant.
- sargun 9y agoUnless you drop the air temperature down to below 0, all the moisture won't drop out on the cold side.
- sambe 9y agoIt varies by country. I'd think most in the UK consider "dryer" to mean heated dryer. I've found condensation dryers do a sub-par job and heated ones are fine on the low setting.
- exprA 9y agoTIL. I don't think I've ever seen one of these hotbox driers in person, but gathered somewhere that those had existed earlier and saw them as fully obsolete technology used only in some industrial settings. The fact that they are still sold and installed (with all the requirements) in ordinary homes is very surprising. (Hint: if you buy a condensation dryer, buy one with a drainage hose, if at all possible. Unless you are a very punctual person, you probably won't learn to empty the water storage after every cycle despite that all the manuals tell you to do so, because it can hold water from several cycles – but you will find yourself having unexpectedly wet laundry from time to time when you start drying with an almost full water tank and are not near when the machine tells it can't continue the program.)
- awqrre 9y agoBatteries don't last this long, why does a dryer have to? it's not all about longevity ...
- bicubic 9y agoWhat to batteries have to do with clothes dryers...? You're comparing a consumable good to a household appliance. Household appliances are expected to last 5 years. 7-10 is pretty normal.
- awqrre 9y agoIf a dryer is not a consumable, shouldn't it last forever? If a battery is a consumable, shouldn't it last only one charging cycle?
- bcook 9y agoNo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durable_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durable_good
- awqrre 9y agoso according to these links, a battery that lasts 2 years is a consumable good but a fridge that last 3 years is a durable good..... I think I get it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rosalinekarr 9y agoBecause dryers are expensive appliances. If they're going to make one that only lasts one tenth as long, it better cost one tenth of the price too.
- StephenConnell 9y ago
- zkms 9y ago> The idea sounds pretty neat but I wonder about longevity of the piezeoelectric transducers. If they'll wear out fast it's entirely feasible to design the dryer around user-replaceable piezos. It may end up like with inkjet printers -- where the dryer itself is just a boring spinning drum with a fan and a moisture collector and a powerful piezo driver, and you end up buying consumable cassettes with the actual transducers inside.
- lt_kernel_panic 9y agoBut then you won't be able to dry your white clothes because your color piezo needs replacement.
- nickpeterson 9y agoYou know what I want? A lemon law that states that major appliances need to run forever. Literally something that says, "This device must run without professional service for 25 years." Forget energy star stuff, 100Kwh saved a year is meaningless because we can always optimize powerplants. Stop building disposable 100LB metal boxes that have to get scrapped and thrown in a landfill. If the device fails earlier than that, the company has to replace it and pay a large fine for producing faulty equipment (larger than the profit from the device by an order of magnitude). Then just allow people to rent the devices (which would obviously cost more) rather that have to buy them outright.
- DKnoll 9y agoFirst you need engineers that can design appliances that, even if warrantied, do not need service within 25 years 100% of the time. Perhaps they can be legislated into existence... ;)
- nickpeterson 9y agoThere is a rover on Mars that had been running by itself for quite a bit and it contends with far more than a dryer.
- briandon 9y agoIt's also a shame that the US DOE has partnered with and is funding R&D for a fully-owned subsidiary (as of 2016 iirc) of a Chinese state-owned company (Haier, which bought GE Appliances).
- Scoundreller 9y ago> DOE’s Building Technologies Office is seeking new clothes dryer technologies that can increase the energy factor (EF) from 3.7 to 5.43 lb/kWh without increasing drying time by more than 20% over baseline units. They're concentrating too much on kWh. One could use the same technology and focus on variable electricity pricing. I want a dryer that I turn at night, and it dynamically turns on-and-off as electricity rates go up and down. It ends at a smooth tumble in the morning so I can put on my day's clothes and fold the rest at it's lowest wrinkle-point.
- duncan_bayne 9y agoIn Australia, that's very hard to achieve because the residential energy market is heavily regulated specifically to _avoid_ exposing low-end consumers to spot pricing.
- caf 9y agoIn at least WA, NSW, QLD and ACT you can go on time-of-use residential tariffs. And driers (and washing machines - which use a considerable amount of energy particularly if they heat the water internally) typically already have timer-start functions.
- duncan_bayne 9y agoSure but time of use is _far_ less volatile than actual spot pricing. Hell, in WA and QLD it's not unknown for AEMO to post _negative_ energy prices.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- s0rce 9y agoThis is an interesting idea and probably would be useful but would only address people in single-family dwellings that don't share driers. I'm guessing that there is a reasonable use of clothes driers in commercial settings (laundry services) and shared driers in multi-family/large residential complexes (although many modern upscale projects have in-unit driers) where driers are shared. Probably the best solution is a cultural shift to air drying. I was very surprised that when I was in the UK, a place not known for sunshine, many air dried their clothes, while when I lived in the desert of Eastern WA nearly everyone used a drier.
- spodek 9y agoIt's not the fastest clothes dryer, but I often use one that runs on fusion in outer space.
- ergothus 9y agoFor apartment goers (or those that live in uncooperative climates) the reliability of such a system is a bigger problem than the speed. But for those that can use it, it is indeed a great system.
- jdavis703 9y agoCan you put your clothes on a fire escape? Or in your bathroom (works great if you have a bathroom with a window).
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y agoAlternatively, a clothes rack on a balcony or receiving direct sunlight through a window or glass sliding door, with both slightly ajar works well. One benefit of this is that your clothes last much longer.
- _delirium 9y agoIn the winter, I find they dry quite quickly if I just put the clothes rack indoors near a radiator.
- celticninja 9y agoHowever never hang clothes on a radiator to dry, this is the least efficient method of using your radiators.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoIf you have city central radiated heating, then making the radiators less effective is just a bonus of getting your clothes to dry a bit faster.
- sandworm101 9y agoAnd how will my cat react to this thing? Something with enough sonic energy to vaporize a significant volume of water is probably loud enough to wake every animal in the area.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ergothus 9y ago...This is a great comment I'd not have thought of.
- bpicolo 9y agoNot to mention warm clothes is like 80% of the benefit of the dryer ;)
- Endama 9y agoI didn't realize this, but yes, this is absolutely true. I wonder how many people would actually be willing to pay a premium on having their clothes warm when coming out of a dryer.
- giarc 9y agoFancy models will have a "warm" cycle that heats the clothes for the last 10 minutes.
- dawnerd 9y agoWonder if they could add a quick warm cycle at the very end. Still use a lot less energy but still get warm clothes.
- zkms 9y agoMost of the energy consumption in a dryer is from the actual drying cycle -- once the clothes are totally dry, the high-temperature cycle to get them all hot doesn't consume much power.
- 9y ago
- smaili 9y ago> At the end of the project, appliance manufacturers including GEA will be ready to invest in this technology and commercialize it. This will result in the U.S. becoming the leader in the clothes drying industry and generate new jobs and innovative applications of the technology. Pretty sure as soon as China is aware of this idea (if not already), they will have something in production and out the door faster and at a much larger scale than the US. Could someone explain why innovative ideas like this have to be published before they're actually built?
- s0rce 9y agoThe career advancement of the scientists and engineers working on the project depend on publications and outreach like this. Source: I was a post-doc at a DOE lab.
- seren 9y agoGE appliances is already a Chinese company so pretty sure they have some chance to be the first to actually commercialize it. So no need to worry about China copying it..
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoAs if I could ever find a clothes dryer in china.
- pasta 9y agoWell I found this design from 2012: http://www.yankodesign.com/2012/03/01/ultrasonic-drying/ http://www.yankodesign.com/2012/03/01/ultrasonic-drying/ Looks Chinese to me.
- demarq 9y agoeven if they found out about it on the day of release they'd still out manoeuvre their American counterparts because.. cost.
- uncensored 9y agoThe logical next leap is to cook food with ultrasound which will hopefully be somewhat faster than conventional cooking and less harmful (no protein denaturing [1]) than microwave cooking 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11088227 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11088227
- chroem- 9y agoThe whole point of cooking food is to denature proteins and kill pathogens. Denatured proteins have exactly the same nutritional content as functional proteins: they're just not folded into their original and potentially dangerous shape anymore.
- uncensored 9y ago"denaturing" does sound scary and bad -- It's a dumb way to describe what happens in any cooking process.... it sounds like turning food into plastic before eating it (take the nature our of it) LOL. Anyway, there are real health risks according to the World Health Organization: "Food safety: Food safety is an important health issue. In a microwave oven, the rate of heating depends on the power rating of the oven and on the water content, density and amount of food being heated. Microwave energy does not penetrate well in thicker pieces of food, and may produce uneven cooking. This can lead to a health risk if parts of the food are not heated sufficiently to kill potentially dangerous micro-organisms. Because of the potential for uneven distribution of cooking, food heated in a microwave oven should rest for several minutes after cooking is completed to allow the heat to distribute throughout the food." That sounds like nuking the surface of the food then waiting for it to cook after it has ben microwaved which may or may not fully achieve thorough cooking. http://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/facts/info_microwaves/en/ http://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/facts/info_microwave...
- db48x 9y agoThat's why your microwave oven has a power setting. It toggles the magnetron on and off during cooking, so that your food cooks more evenly.
- kaosjester 9y agoDoes this mean the socks won't come out of the dryer warm? That's sort of a deal breaker for me.
- blarghh 9y agoWhat's the effect on the clothes themselves? I won't let anything but underwear, gym clothes, socks, and tees in a dryer because it's generally considered bad for them. I hang dry all of my wovens.
- zubat 9y agoWill it kill bug infestations?
- marak830 9y agoI saw something like this demoed on Australian TV about 15 years ago. I was always wondering what happened to it!
- beagle3 9y agoDepending on the ultrasonic frequency used, and the spacing of seams/tailoring of the clothes, it's possible that some clothes will come out of the dryer in pieces, and you will have to sew them back together... Although I suspect wide availability of these dryer will quickly eliminate that kind of sewing, much like the prevalence of dishwashers has almost eliminated non-dishwasher-safe kitchen stuff.
- basicplus2 9y agoVibration of molecules... sounds alot like heat energy
- jdhendrickson 9y agoAs but the difference is in the amount of energy expended vibrating them no? It sounds to me more like vigorously shaking the water off the cloth fibers and then hoovering them up, which is much more energy efficient than heating said water until it turns into a vapor and hoovering it up.
- tiatia 9y agoUltrasonic Dryer? Who needs this? And DOE dropped nearly a million on it? Was it an SBIR grant with nice kickbacks? :-) I found a washing machine with ultrasonic much more interesting: http://www.tovatech.com/blog/3759/ultrasonic-cleaner/ultrasonic-washing-machine-looks-like-it-is-available-in-japan http://www.tovatech.com/blog/3759/ultrasonic-cleaner/ultraso... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/21/dolfi-washing-device_n_6510494.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/21/dolfi-washing-devic... Would be a little worried about stress on your clothes AND/OR Ears. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/09/sounds-you-cant-hear-can-still-hurt-your-ears http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/09/sounds-you-cant-hear-...
- rotten 9y agoMaybe it will keep mice and bugs away while it is running.
- Tharkun 9y agoSo this project ran from 2014-2016. Any word on whether anything was accomplished?
- peterwwillis 9y agoAdvanced clothesline technology, now available with WiFi.
- tim333 9y agoThe video showed a small bit of fabric touching the transducer. I'm not sure how well it's going to work with a big heap of jeans, jumpers and the like.
- scarlac 9y agoThe demonstration seems to assume that physical contact is possible. For layered clothes it may not work that well, if at all. But! Even if we assume there's no progress in that area, I can still see this being used in an industrial laundry. I've worked in one and there are machines specialized for different types of garments. With automation, it may actually make economic sense. So while use in a consumer market may seem far out, industrial applications are still possible.
- somberi 9y agoElectric ceiling fan in a small room dries a stand full of clothes in 4-5 hours in a 70%RH climate and costs a LOT less than drum dryers and is safer for the garments.
- dingo_bat 9y agoBut you cannot dump your clothes into the room and expect them to dry.
- iplaw 9y agoThis is how I dry all of my cycling kits, gloves, socks, warmers, etc. I have a four hanging drying racks [1] that I hang on the four ceiling fans in my home gym. The lycra dries in only an hour or two since there is airflow on all sides of the items. It makes for very efficient drying and it wholly prevents heat degradation of the lycra. [1]: https://www.containerstore.com/s/stainless-steel-lingerie-drying-rack/d?productId=10035031&q=drying https://www.containerstore.com/s/stainless-steel-lingerie-dr...
- kurthr 9y agoWhy not just use a vacuum pump and pull the water vapor out at a constant temperature. You can flow 33C dry air (use a condenser before expanding and heating, if you like) across the clothes as they tumble to keep them from freezing. You wouldn't have to pump below a 10% of an atmosphere to quickly dry your clothes (vapor pressure of water is 5% of an atmosphere at that temp). To give an idea of how fast: With a 1liter/sec STP air intake, you would extract ~1gram/sec of water so in 15min you would remove ~1kg of water.
- kortex 9y agoAnd with the air mostly removed, you can spin the drum really really fast! I think you're on to something here. :P Maybe not. I've done hundreds of solvent evaporations under vacuum (rotovap). The problem is you need a trap, or else solvents condense in the pump which causes your efficiency to go down. So now you need a heat pump or similar, now you're talking about a really complicated dryer. But it'd be efficient.
- kurthr 9y agoYeah, thanks for the comment on the condensation. The output pump would really need to mostly pump water and vapor at the input and liquid at the output, but not to very low pressure... even a peristaltic might be doable (no rotary vane/blower needed). It was just a thought, I used to rotovap too so running through the calculations seemed like a fun idea.
- jostmey 9y agoI want to see a study done on such a devices safety. The sound waves it emit are able to desiccate clothing. What is the effect of these sound waves escaping the device? Would it desiccate living tissue?
- djrogers 9y agoProbably the same ultrasonics hat are used in humidifiers. Hint, they don't travel far.
- iamatworknow 9y agoThey mention that in the video. It also mentions that they're thinking of creating a tumble/drum dryer with these piezoelectrics. As opposed to a traditional tumble dryer that spins to aerate the cloths, I think the spinning motion would instead be required to pin the clothing against the piezoelectric lined drum (though I imagine it would need to stop and change direction periodically in order to expose different areas of the fabric to the drum wall).
- didsomeonesay 9y agoI sincerely hope this is no vaporware...
- gravypod 9y agoIf these go mainstream it would be thousands of times more handy to the small shop then for cloths. Vibratory cleaners with that kind of volume are crazy expensive!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]