Ultrasonic washing of textiles

Junhee Choi; Tae-Hong Kim; Ho-Young Kim; Wonjung Kim

doi:10.1016/j.ultsonch.2015.07.018

Ultrasonic washing of textiles

Ultrason Sonochem. 2016 Mar:29:563-7. doi: 10.1016/j.ultsonch.2015.07.018. Epub 2015 Jul 20.

Authors

Junhee Choi¹, Tae-Hong Kim¹, Ho-Young Kim², Wonjung Kim³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-744, Republic of Korea.
² Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-744, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: hyk@snu.ac.kr.
³ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sogang University, Seoul 121-742, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: wonjungkim@sogang.ac.kr.

PMID: 26215790
DOI: 10.1016/j.ultsonch.2015.07.018

Abstract

We present the results of experimental investigation of ultrasonic washing of textiles. The results demonstrate that cavitation bubbles oscillating in acoustic fields are capable of removing soils from textiles. Since the washing performance is mitigated in a large washing bath when using an ultrasonic transducer, we propose a novel washing scheme by combining the ultrasonic vibration with a conventional washing method utilizing kinetic energy of textiles. It is shown that the hybrid washing scheme achieves a markedly enhanced performance up to 15% in comparison with the conventional washing machine. This work can contribute to developing a novel laundry machine with reduced washing time and waste water.

Keywords: Acoustic cavitation; Textile washing; Ultrasonic cleaning.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't