Cleaning up the laundry industry

Put away that washboard. Getting your clothes clean doesn't need to use a lot of water anymore.

Researchers at the University of Leeds in England have come up with a way to use as little as a cup of water, along with a lot of tiny plastic chips, to wash away the stains in a load of laundry.

Martin Gregson, non-executive director of Xeros, the university spin-out formed to commercialize the process, told the Cleantech Group that the very small amount of water and detergent that's added acts in a conventional washing manner.

"But the polymer pellets act, if you like, as a magnet, and they draw the soiling and the dirt out of that small amount of water," he said.

"So the water is effectively constantly being cleaned and re-purified to carry on the washing process."

Gregson said the process uses a commonly commercially available polymer in a chip form, with the chips measuring about 5 millimeters in diameter.

The university said the new technology could be on the U.K. market as early as next year. Founded in February 2007 by Stephen Burkinshaw, a professor of textile chemistry at Leeds, Xeros recently raised just under £500,000 in funding from London's IP Group (LON: IPO).

Helping to clean up clothes is the main focus of Xeros right now, but the company sees the technology being applied to a number of other areas over the long-term, including industrial processes such as wastewater treatment and metal degreasing.

"One of the real beauties of this process is its very simple approach. It's not space-age technology," said Gregson.

"It's an evaluation of what has been a long known phenomenon that certain polymers do absorb solid matter, so it should be relatively simple to scale it up and produce a machine."

Consumers could also cut down on the use of tumble driers with the new technology, as Xeros said clothes come out of its process almost dry.

"Because of the inherent simplicity of the process, I would envisage a machine costing probably less but certainly no more than a conventional washing machine," said Gregson.

Xeros said that according to U.K. research group Waterwise, the average British household uses almost 21 liters of water each day on clothes washing — 13 percent of daily household water consumption.

The company said that accounts for approximately 455 million liters of water daily, which is enough to fill 145 Olympic size swimming pools.

"There are huge cost savings, particularly in terms of energy, but also in terms of water, which is becoming a very expensive resource in many parts of the world, and also the effluent discharge," said Gregson.

Xeros said a typical washing machine uses about 35 kilograms of water for every kilogram of clothes that's washed, as well as large amounts of energy to heat the water and to dry the clothes afterward.

The company is also testing its technology for the dry cleaning market, hoping to replace certain solvents which it said are potentially harmful.

Another target for Xeros is to use the process during the dyeing of textiles to remove unwanted excess dyes.

Gregson said, "Huge quantities of water are needed to remove the loose dye stuff that remains after the cleaning process, and we've shown that the Xeros process can reduce the amount of water used in that by about 60 percent."

Xeros said its technology has already been proven in controlled lab experiments and has also been tested in commercial scale dry cleaning facilities.

Gregson said Xeros is currently looking to develop links with commercial partners, which would include machine manufacturers.

"We do have close links with one manufacturer who is building a prototype machine, but I'm afraid couldn't tell you who that is," said Gregson. "But it is an industry known name."

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