Most homeowners don’t view laundry as an important or expensive process in their house, but washing and drying clothes can be a large waste of water and electricity over the long term. Clothes dryers alone account for around 4% of all residential electricity consumption, coupled with the fact that approximately 80% of all US households own one, this adds up to over 9 billion per year in enormous utility costs.

Simply cutting the dryer out of the process is not always practical, especially in the winter when it isn’t possible to hang up the clothes outside. To provide a more efficient solution, scientists at the Oak Ridge Nation Laboratory, with assistance from the US Department of Energy’s Buildings Technologies Office and GE Appliances, have developed a new dryer prototype that drastically reduces the amount of energy used for each load.

The new design substitutes heat with high-frequency vibrations that remove moisture from clothes. This method has proven to be immensely more efficient than the traditional method. Compared to previous dryers, each dry cycle is cut down by 20 minutes, reducing the amount of energy used by 70%.

The dryer’s process uses ultrasonic waves produced by piezoelectric transducers which are driven by a custom amplifier. Since the new method operates at room temperature instead of high heat, a cool mist is produced during the process instead of the warm humid air that conventional dryers create. This results in a reduction of mold and dampness within homes where a dryer is used on a regular basis.

The full-scale prototype of a commercialized product is set to be finished by this fall, which if implemented in enough households would make a drastic decrease in overall wasted energy.

As new technology is produced in the energy industry, more companies switch to efficient power generation methods in order to help cut down on the amount of wasted energy used per household. Eclipse offers experience in a wide range of energy product assembly, including renewable energy sources, providing optimized efficiently and safety for all your projects.

Source: DailyMail