Will Your Next Dryer Be Ultrasonic?

Are you too impatient to wait for your clothes to be dry? Alternatively, perhaps your dryer is taking longer than usual to dry your clothes, due to a failing heating element. Well, you may not have long to wait before your new tumble dryer is ultrasonic and subsequently dries your clothes in half the time of a conventional dryer.

A team of developers in the USA have designed a tumble dryer that uses sound waves rather than heat to dry your clothes, but does it work?

How It Works

These sound waves are at high frequency (ultrasonic) which create vibrations that effectively shake the water out of clothes to form a cold mist. The water in the mist is then driven out of the drum to a water collection tank.

As a result, the ultrasonic machine takes just 20 minutes to dry a load that would take 50 minutes to dry in a conventional dryer and uses 70% less energy.

A Dryer With Less Lint?

Another benefit that researchers found while testing the ultrasonic prototype dryer is that it creates less lint than conventional dryers too. Lint forms as hot air and steam dislodge fibres in clothes. The heat stresses clothes, causing extra wear as well as fading the colour of garments over time.

As the ultrasonic dryer does not use heat, there is less lint as well as less wear on your laundry meaning your garments should stay in good condition for even longer.

Why Is There A New Development For Dryers?

The tumble dryer is effective but uses a lot of energy. Furthermore, the design or development of dryers hasn’t been changed in decades. With people demanding quicker turnarounds in all aspects of life, as well as more energy efficient practices, ultrasonic technology was put to the test in dryers, with so far fantastic results.

However, this dryer is still a prototype, and it may take years for ultrasonic dryers to be available on the market and then to become the norm for tumble dryer technology.