Ultrasonic dryer dries your clothes without heat; invented by Indian-American researcher Viral Patel

Now, you don’t have to wait too long for your clothes to dry as an Indian-American researcher has invented a dryer that could easily dry clothes even without heat.

Viral Patel along with his team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have invented a dryer that could laundry your clothes much faster. Expected to be five times more energy efficient, ‘Ultrasonic dryer’ could dry a large load of clothes in about half the time.

“It is a completely new approach. Instead of evaporation, it’s technically performing mechanical extraction of the moisture within the fabric,” Patel told Knoxville News Sentinel.

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Traditional dryers generally use straight-forward technology, Patel said. “As air gets sucked in from the surrounding area, it travels through a heater or gas burner and into the drum where the clothes tumble around allowing the heat to absorb the moisture with the air leaving the dryer,” he explained.

However, the ultrasonic dryer uses piezoelectric transducers to remove moisture: when high frequency voltage is applied to the transducers, they vibrate at a high frequency causing trapped water to leave the fabric without heat. Basically, the dryer shakes the water out of the clothes, speeding up the process.

In order to proceed towards commercialisation, GE Appliances is in the process of developing an agreement with the researchers, Patel said.

“We’re trying to develop the technology that has efficiency greater than or equal to the state of the art but with a competitive cost, so it can be sold on the US market” because “if you walk into a big box store and you want a dryer, normally the first things consumers look for is how much it costs” and not energy efficiency,” Patel said.

It will take at least two to five years before the ultrasonic dryers can be available in the market, he said adding “GE brings the expertise in that area, which we do not have.”

(With PTI inputs)

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