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Ultra-low-energy consumption ultrasonic clothes dryer

energy.gov

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Re: Ultra-low-energy consumption ultrasonic clothes dryer

#71

Post by majormajor »

awqrre wrote: post #5
ams6110 wrote: post #2

A 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.

Batteries don't last this long, why does a dryer have to? it's not all about longevity ...

Arranging large appliance delivery and disposal is a pain in the ass when you've got full time jobs to deal with. Don't want to do that any more than needed.

Re: Ultra-low-energy consumption ultrasonic clothes dryer

#72

Post by Smushman »

sandworm101 wrote: post #11

And 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.

This video actually has audio included of the action on a small piece of cloth (~1 inch circle) - I could not hear anything when it was drying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCmXzdz6qGQ

Re: Ultra-low-energy consumption ultrasonic clothes dryer

#73

Post by function_seven »

awqrre wrote: post #5
ams6110 wrote: post #2

A 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.

Batteries don't last this long, why does a dryer have to? it's not all about longevity ...

Batteries not lasting long is considered a limitation of our current battery technology. This limitation doesn’t currently exist for typical clothes dryers.

There’s no reason to introduce a new limitation unless the technology makes up for it in other ways. Having to replace a clothes dryer every two years would require the technology to be very good to justify such a burdensome task.

Re: Ultra-low-energy consumption ultrasonic clothes dryer

#75

Post by vinceguidry »

bpicolo wrote: post #15
sandworm101 wrote: post #11

And 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.

Not to mention warm clothes is like 80% of the benefit of the dryer ;)

I don't understand why this is such a valued aspect of dryers. All clothes coming out of the dryer for me go right into my drawers / hanging. They don't get worn at the very earliest the next day. I rotate everything so I'm not just wearing the same socks and undies over and over again, so the vast majority of the time they don't even get worn then.

Is the psychological effect of folding warm clothes rather than cold really that powerful?

Re: Ultra-low-energy consumption ultrasonic clothes dryer

#76

Post by lt_kernel_panic »

zkms wrote: post #62
ams6110 wrote: post #2

A 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.

> 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 trans…

But then you won't be able to dry your white clothes because your color piezo needs replacement.

Re: Ultra-low-energy consumption ultrasonic clothes dryer

#78

Post by comicjk »

spodek wrote: post #7

It's not the fastest clothes dryer, but I often use one that runs on fusion in outer space.

Hanging clothes in direct sunlight is overkill, and probably reduces their useful life due to the UV. All you need is sufficient moving air. I hang mine under the deck or just on racks indoors.

Re: Ultra-low-energy consumption ultrasonic clothes dryer

#80

Post by chroem- »

uncensored wrote: post #33

The 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

The 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.
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