Super Green Clean - The idea

Washing machines can use up to 40 gallons of water per load. Washing loads on hot water can spend 0.5 kWhs and the dryer can use 5 kWhs. The amount of water usage can be reduced significantly by designing the washer and dryer to be water and energy efficient.

This will require designing the washers and dryers from scratch. The main theme will be reuse. Large tubs of water will be stored behind the washers. The well-insulated tubs will be kept at different temperatures: hot, warm, and cool. The water will be mixed with the minimum amount of soap necessary to get the clothing clean. After the washing is done, the soapy water is removed and the soap and other contaminants are removed from the water, either mechanically (e.g. reverse osmosis [RO]) or chemically (e.g. distillation). The water goes back into the tub of the same temperature. Potentially, in the case of using RO to clean the water, very little heat and water would be lost in this process.

What’s left in the washer is clean, but wet clothing. The next step is to wring out as much water is possible before drying. For sturdy clothing spinning at a high velocity can remove a significant amount of the water.  For less sturdy clothing like wool sweaters, this isn’t an option. After all of water that can be removed in the washer, it’s time to dry.

It’s possible to make drying clothes significantly more energy efficient.  The way the clothes get dry in the dryer if through evaporation. It’s possible to get fast evaporation without as much heat if you can expose all of the clothing’s surface area to the air and use convection to dry the clothing.

The way you would do this is by hanging the clothing on flexible wire frames designed for different clothing articles, t-shirts, jeans, underwear, etc. Once on the wire frames, it will look like a group of invisible people, each wearing single articles of clothing. All of the wire frames will be put in the ‘dryer’. This dryer is a large tube that would look like an elongated donut, the clothes are placed in one part of the donut with all of the holes facing one direction. On the part of the donut without clothes is a de-humidifier, a small heater, and a fan. The fan blows dry warm air through the clothes. Because the clothing has all of it’s surface area exposed to the flowing air, the clothing will dry as almost as a fast as in a conventional dryer.  I think this new dryer design could reduce energy usage by a factor of ten.