Ultrasonic system for continuous washing of textiles in liquid layers

The use of ultrasonic energy for washing of textiles has been tried several times without achieving practical development. in fact, the softness of the fibres makes the cavitation to produce small erosion effect and the reticulate structure of the fabric favours the formation of air bubble layers which obstruct wave penetration. In addition, a high proportion of water with respect to the wash load and a certain water degassing is required to assure efficiency and homogeneity in the wash performance. Such requirements have hindered the commercial development of the ultrasonic washing machines for domestic purposes. For specific industrial applications, a great part of these limitations may be overcome. This article deals with a new process in which the fabric is exposed to the ultrasonic field in a flat format. Such process has been implemented at laboratory and at semi-industrial stage by using specially designed power ultrasonic transducers with rectangular plate radiators. The cleaning effect is produced by the intense cavitation field generated by the plate radiator within a thin layer of liquid where the fabric is introduced. The homogeneity of such effect is achieved by the successive exposure of all the fabric areas to the intense acoustic field. In this paper the structure and performance of the developed system are shown. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.