Air Wash – Washing with Air

The Inspiration

Mani Shahriari

Global water resources are dwindling. Most countries around the Globe are facing droughts, year after year. We will need our water resources, for personal consumption, rather than cleaning our clothes.Today all over the globe people will use billions of liters of fresh water to wash their clothes. They also will use millions of gallons of detergents, as well as huge amount of energy to dry their clothes after washing.

This life-giving element has always fascinated me, and had also influenced on my thinking and way of working

Sadly for more than 60 years manufactory washing machines have not adapted to new methods of technologies for conserving water and energy.

Having an Iranian heritage, and seeing relatives living in a country which 2/3 of it is desert, we learn to respect water, and it’s Elemental role for all lives on Earth.

Stages of Development

First I had to get full awareness of water shortage, as well as how much chemicals we put back into the river, and lakes, by using detergents.

To this end I studied first in depth with the issue of dirt and its properties.It was also important to develop an understanding of the mode of action of surfactants and their specifics before I went to familiarize myself with the usual washing concepts.While I quickly rejected the idea of using steam, the use of ultrasound and UV light appeared promising, until I found through my research on a process that takes place in the industrial Application. After couple month of research I have discovered that CO₂ possesses low surface tension, has a canny ability to penetrate and remove stubborn dirt and stains. So by replacing all detergents with CO₂ I have developed a washing machine for the 21st century and beyond.

Then I had to talk to many scientists, and engineers, to figure out if the technology exist that i will combine in my concept. I discovered that the technologies I have in mind, are all currently available and started focusing on it’s design, and ease of use. For 60 years the manufactures has used a square box shape for all of their products and my goal was to get rid of the box. I believe simplicity is a major factor when consumers decide to buy an item. AirWash design is Evolutionary and Revolutionary.

The Function

Air Wash is a revolutionary way to wash your garment using No Water, and No Detergent.

Air wash captures CO₂ from the atmosphere and under pressure makes liquid CO₂, and stores it in a tank.For each load Air wash will use some of this CO₂ and continuously will take more CO₂ out of the air and fills the tank at all time. Because I used liquid CO₂, the moment the washing cycle is over and the washing machine doors opens up all the liquid CO₂ left in the textile will evaporate resulting in a totally dried Garmet at the end of each cycle. Each wash cycle causes only a 2% loss of CO_2.

I use acrylic glass cylinder. The acrylic glass cylinder is equipped with OLED technology. The color and appearance can be customized by the user without limits and is controled via wlan-enabled devices.This accesses the Customize trend and corresponds to the today fast changing preferences, circumstances and environments of people.

Here are some highlights for this revolutionary washing machine:

• NO WATER- globally we can save trillions of cubic meters of water each and every year.
• NO DETERGENT- we can take billions of liter of chemicals which eventually ends up in our lakes rivers or ground water.
• save energy – by the nature of this technology we can save immense amount of energy eliminating the need to dry clothes.
• Better cleaning results- when compared to the current methods.
• ease of use – be it online, or by using different AAPs.
• shorter wash cycle – resulting in additional energy saving.
• antibacterial result – which is a direct effect of using CO₂ as I washing detergent.
• reduce CO₂ in the atmosphere – even though the reduction will be exiguous, we still can realize reduction never the less, when we count the global use of it.
• clothes are immadietly dry
• low noise
• all materials are washable, due to the gentle cleaning without spin cycle
• apps (for example a weather app to estimate what clothes to wash for the next days)
• flexible position

Source: James Dyson Award, press release, 2014-08.