August 25,2014
In the midst of a drought, wouldn’t a water-free laundry be nice? How about a clothes dryer that uses 20% less electricity? Turns out the California Energy Commission expects these devices to be in our near future.
CO2Nexus water-free laundry machine
With a grant from the Energy Commission, CO2Nexus is wrapping up an experimental project to bring a water-free laundry machine to market. Aramark, a respected Fortune 500 company, is demonstrating the technology in Los Angeles and piloting a process that doesn’t use a drop of water and can cut operational costs by 50 percent.
The process uses carbon dioxide as a textile cleaner. Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring and abundant gas that has excellent cleaning properties when converted to a liquid. When the carbon dioxide is returned to a gas, the fabric is clean and dry with minimal recyclable waste. Traditional dry cleaning is a similar process, but uses a petroleum or synthetic solvent and produces some emissions.
Results at the Aramark laundry, where the carbon dioxide process was used for “clean room” garments, found the process is gentler on fabric than a traditional wash-dry cycle, extending the life of clothing resulting in less shrinkage and wear.
While the process is designed for specialty garments, at one laundry, it is estimated the annual water savings would be 60 million gallons. That’s equal to the amount of water 850 homes would use in a year.
The process also uses less energy, cutting utility costs by nearly half.
Laundry is cleaned with the water-free system.
The Energy Commission funds research and development projects that reduce emissions and save money as well as use less energy.
Energy Efficient Cloths Dryer
Now that the cloths are clean – how about helping us dry them for less? Yes, I know I could just hang them up. What else?
The Energy Commission is funding a University of California Davis study to develop an energy-efficient clothes dryer.
This project will develop a low-cost, self-calibrating automatic controller to reduce energy use in gas clothes dryers by 20 percent or more through accurately terminating the drying cycle when the remaining moisture content of the load is two percent or less. If successful, this project will benefit California ratepayers by reducing the cost to operate clothes dryers.