SEOUL – Scientists in Korea have presented a new way of washing textiles using ultrasound to create streams of bubbles, which then agitate fabrics and remove stains without the need for large amounts of water or the use of potentially hazardous chemicals.

With chemical legislation tightening in the textile producing regions of Europe, the USA and China, many textile mills have been looking at alternative ways of cleaning textiles in laundries and wet processing facilities. One such idea has been to use the gas ozone in denim laundries to get washed out or stone-washed effects.

These types of textile innovations have lead to greater work on the investigation of ultrasonic washing of textiles, whereby microscopic bubbles are released into a solution that oscillate in acoustic fields are capable of removing stains from textiles.

In this instance, Korean scientists have placed textiles into a large washing bath equipped with an ultrasonic transducer to create ultrasonic vibration within a conventional washing method. The sound waves produced work in tandem with the kinetic energy (from movement) of textiles being washed to effectively clean the fabrics. It is claimed that this hybrid washing system can achieve a markedly enhanced performance of stain removal by up to 15 per cent in comparison with the conventional industrial washing machines.

It's believed this work can contribute to developing a novel laundry machine with reduced washing time and less chemicals in wastewater to lower costs even further.

Publication: Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, Vol 29, pp. 563–567.

Author: Wonjung Kim, Sogang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.