The Future of Laundry: No More Water

Does anyone else see the potential problem of pockets full of pellets?

Yes, there would certainly be pellets all over the place if you used this method to wash clothes- I think it's better suited for linens and such...

I like new ideas that can spark other ideas, but this doesn't seem like it would work out too well in a normal household.

It could work in hotels for towels and sheets like Tor suggested, but I still think that once you pull them out, many pellets would come out as well. Even if just a couple of pellets came out ... it doesn't seem like a good idea.

I'll wait for the cleaning nanobots, thank you.

I just watched their demo video and they actually put extra beads in a shirt pocket to prove that the beads do come out.

www.xerosltd.com

They state that 99.95% of the beads come out of the laundry. The rest you have to shake out into a bin or maybe vacuum them out with an attachment.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I hate doing the laundry, mainly because I have to use community machines. If I have to stand there shaking and/or vacuuming beads out of all the shirts and pants I have, I'm going somewhere else to do my laundry.

Again, I like new ideas, but this one needs a bit more thought, I think. It's still in the development stage, so perhaps they can perfect it somehow using magnets and magic.

Has anyone ever done a washer that keeps that final rinse water in a tank, which I would think would be fairly clean, and used it for the start of the next load? I would think that would work just fine for cold or warm wash loads, though maybe not for hot (unless the washer connects to an electric water heater, in which case it would consume the same power to use the rinse water but heat it in the mashine).

For that matter why the heck don't they recycle the hot, moist air from the clothes dryer by running it through a dehumidifier and sending it back in? Pulling out the water will re-heat the air through the latent heat of vaporization of the water as it condenses.

The more a wash my clothes in the regular machine the more faded and worn out they get. I'm sure pulverizing the clothes with plastic pellets will weather our gentle fabrics much faster than soap and water.

It would be a terrific way to decrease the water use in industrial setting as mentioned.

Who knows though, how much more annoying would small round essentially strands of carpet like material be in your pocket versus lint we already have? Might be negligible. The fact you might have some in your pocket I'm sure could be negated even more if they were to combine the centrifugal force with some sort of vaccum effect or opposite electrical charge. My question would be in terms of washing heavily soiled loads, as well as any properties of truly cleaning the clothes in terms of antibacterial.

90% less water is great, but how green is the process used to manufacture these little nylon balls? And would any detergent work without consequences?

Awesome tech though, we go from beating our clothes on rocks or with stick in moving water, to pounding them with hundreds or thousands of little beads.

As for the smart appliances in contact and deciding when to use the electricity. I would forecast alot of problems with such a system.

"Again, I like new ideas, but this one needs a bit more thought, I think."

I don't think the creators are too concerned with people who are already afraid of doing their laundry in front of others. They don't have to redesign a novel idea just because you don't want to shake your clothes.

I feel that the major flaw in this novel idea is not the fact that you would have to shake your clothes afterward, but the mistake of attempting to solve one resource problem while detrimentally affecting others. First of all plastics are made from petroleum products, which means as oil resources are reduced plastic products will become more expensive. Also even if these pellets are good for hundreds of washes it will still necessitate that they be disposed of while plastics are already building up in the world oceans, concentrating pollutants and toxins, and serving as a vector for them to reenter the food chain and taint a valuable food source. Overall I feel that any overuse of plastic or product that encourages our throw away consumer mentality will not be a viable option for a clean future.

I think some are forgetting that they still need to be placed in a dryer? Won't the dryer remove the remaining pellets like lint?

If you want to do laundry using one tenth the water, wear your clothes ten times between washes.

(But, never your underwear and socks! Geesh!!)

Aha, but how will the clothing SMELL afterwords?

I like the idea and it would be improved, but what about disinfecting? Among plastic beads, bleach, and nasty tidy-whities what's worse for the environment?.

To the unimaginative/lazy people who think removing stray pellets from pockets of clothing is some kind of design flaw:

Did any of you read that bit in the article that promised a device capable of using one tenth the water to complete a laundry cycle? That accomplishment is pretty freakin' great and well worth the slight inconvenience of shaking a few pellets out of clothing after a cycle! Besides, presumably you could simply toss stray pellets back inside the unloaded washer to get them back where they belong.

Also I understand that nylon is a fairly easy to recycle product so, since it is expressly stated that the pellets have a limited lifetime anyway, I think it would be wise of the product's designers to incorporate some type of recycling mechanism into the machine's life-cycle. Say a built-in counter to tell you when to replace the pellets, a mechanism to remove used pellets from the machine, logistics for receiving used pellets from customers, and a recycling center for crafting fresh pellets from the old ones.

Hmmm, nobody picked-up on the fact that centripetal force was used instead of the correct centrifugal force!

@RisingPhoenix. "...afraid of doing their laundry in front of others..." Why are you afraid of doing your laundry in front of others?

I don't like commercial laundry machines because it takes time to wait in front of them. You need to do that so that other people don't take the clothes and leave them on a dirty table or worse, steal them.

That's not even the point. Having to stand there and shake pellets out of every pocket and sock would take even more time. So, they may have to "redesign their novel idea" when nobody buys them. Having comments ahead of time might save them money or improve their product ... but go ahead, buy their stock and shake your pellets.

You still use 2/3 of the detergent. Then, how do you get the detergent out of the clothes?

Oh, of course. Rinse them.

Hmm...Interesting idea except do the pellets really completely separate out? The whole reason you have rince cycles in the first place is to get the detergent residue & any remaining dirt out. Does not sound very effective to me. This sounds like another very expensive contraption we do not need...I think I will keep my top loader washer, it's cheap to buy(unlike the front loaders of today) & rinces very nicely, thank you very much.

Actually, RAILGUN, I do just what you stated, I do pipe my ELECTRIC dryer's exhaust into my forced air furnace so I get the humidity from it and the heat of it added to my home's exisitng heat (and in winter I can use the humidity!), I just make sure the air is blowing even if the furnace heat isn't on while drying clothes.
DO NOT TRY THIS WITH GAS DRIERS!!!!

As for this invention, I kinda' do the same thing already. What I do is use nylon plastic sheets instead of pellets. And I don't use it in a washer. I use it in conjunction with my actual clothes. I wrap my body in the plastic nylon sheets and then put my clothes on, on top of it. This way my excessive body oils and excruciatingly bad ordor is sealed away from the clothes they the nylon sheet barrier. Pretty much just like this product.