Wonder washing machine 'virtually waterless'

[Matty1973]

Claims to cut water consumption by 98%.


QUOTE
Xeros director Rob Rule told edie that the process itself was fairly simple and the chips could be reused over and over.

"There will come a point when the chips need replacing but we haven't found it yet," he said.



Sounds too good to be true to me. Any ideas how/if it can work?

http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=14814&channel=0&title=Wonder+washing+machine+'virtually+waterless'

[rjh01]

Still uses detergent. I wonder how they get the detergent out of the clothes? In a normal washing machine they use a rinse. But they cannot use a rinse as that would use water.

Interesting that I cannot find anyone else with the story.

[Dancing David]

I saw the story on Yahoo here is a search page from them, probably all the same press release.

http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news;_ylt=A0WTTktKX1JIF2IBGRvQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTBhNj RqazhxBHNlYwNzZWFyY2g-?p=Xeros+washing+machine&c=&x=wrt

The company is Xeros

[wahrheit]

Sounds interesting, but I can't imagine how it actually cleans the fabric. Will the dirt stick to the plastic chips or get washed out with the little water they use?


http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news;_ylt=A0WTTktKX1JIF2IBGRvQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTBhNj RqazhxBHNlYwNzZWFyY2g-?p=Xeros+washing+machine&c=&x=wrt


Did you mean: Xerox washing machine

That would be a great invention. I could clone all the single socks which tragically lost their counterpart.

[Darat]

Doesn't seem anything intrinsically incredible about the claim - after all abrading clothes is a traditional way of cleaning clothes. (Some of us even remember washing boards and mangles!)

I'd like to see an answer to rjh01' question as the majority water in a current automatic washing machine is used to rinse the clothes not in the wash cycle. And since the description seems to be referring to an abrading process I wonder how gentle or not it is on the clothes?

[EHocking]

Doesn't seem anything intrinsically incredible about the claim - after all abrading clothes is a traditional way of cleaning clothes. (Some of us even remember washing boards and mangles!)

I'd like to see an answer to rjh01' question as the majority water in a current automatic washing machine is used to rinse the clothes not in the wash cycle. And since the description seems to be referring to an abrading process I wonder how gentle or not it is on the clothes?As I understood it, the detergent and water still do the cleaning, the chips are then used to absorb and remove the dirty water from the washing machine.

Xeros washing machine (http://www.goodcleantech.com/2008/06/xeros_washing_machine_cleans_c.php)
The technology employs the use of half-centimeter plastic chips to do the actual cleaning. The machine heats what little water (mixed with detergent) is used to dissolve the dirt which is then absorbed by the plastic chips. These chips, which are loaded into the machine at 44 pounds per cycle, can be reused within a six month timeframe.

Here's the University of Leeds' (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/media/press_releases/current/washing_machine.htm) page on the Xeros system.

[Darat]

Thanks for that link - makes it tad clearer. I still wonder about the rinsing at the end of wash cycle and the abrasive effect of the chips.

[Lucky]

Here (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/media/press_releases/current/washing_machine.htm) is the university's press release.

rjh01: Why are you saying the process would still use detergent? The press release says nothing of the sort.

Matty1973: A bit over-skeptical! Who are you suggesting could be the fraud? The university? Professor Burkinshaw? I'm confident the university would not have based a spinout company on this technology without some pretty convincing evidence that it works, and has good commercial potential.

[Darat]

Here (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/media/press_releases/current/washing_machine.htm) is the university's press release.

rjh01: Why are you saying the process would still use detergent? The press release says nothing of the sort.


...snip...


But the artciles linked to do say detergent is still used.

[Lucky]

But the artciles linked to do say detergent is still used.
True, I had only read the press release, which doesn't mention detergent. The detergent used would obviously be only a tiny amount, in proportion to the water.

[EHocking]

True, I had only read the press release, which doesn't mention detergent. The detergent used would obviously be only a tiny amount, in proportion to the water.
Surely the same proportion to water, but only an overall tiny amount in proportion to "regular" machines? :)

[Acleron]

True, I had only read the press release, which doesn't mention detergent. The detergent used would obviously be only a tiny amount, in proportion to the water.

Wouldn't the amount of detergent be proportional to the amount of dirt?

[casebro]

I assumed the plastic did an electrostatic more than abrading. Sort of like the way they use resin beads to soften water, the minerals stick to the resin?

Some plastics are very slippery, some are very abrasive. Some materials choice required.

I wonder if buyers should keep their old machines, to wash the beads in every six months?

[aggle-rithm]

I thought of a way to make a dryer that doesn't use heat. You just suck the air out, creating a vacuum, and the water will evaporate out at room temperature.

Thinking about it, though, it's probably a lot easier to build a durable machine that heats things up than one that creates and maintains a vacuum. Probably uses less power, too.

[GreyICE]

I thought of a way to make a dryer that doesn't use heat. You just suck the air out, creating a vacuum, and the water will evaporate out at room temperature.

Thinking about it, though, it's probably a lot easier to build a durable machine that heats things up than one that creates and maintains a vacuum. Probably uses less power, too.
Ahahaha.

No really, the atmospheric pressure is 14 pounds per SQUARE INCH. Assuming your proposed dryer is a perfect sphere with 5 cubic feet of interior space, it needs to be able to resist 21 TONS of atmospheric force pressing on the outside of said sphere.

Vacuum chambers tend to be small for some reason...

This system does seem interesting. Guess it depends on how cheap/easy the chips are to produce.

[rats]

Doesn't seem anything intrinsically incredible about the claim - after all abrading clothes is a traditional way of cleaning clothes.
The story reminds me of the sales pitch from inventor of dry cleaning in The Man Who Wasn't There: :)
That's right! Dry cleaning--remember the name. It's going to revolutionize the laundry industry, and those that get in early are gonna bear the fruit away.
Interesting concept, though guess there may be an environmental issue of how the decomposing the plastic chips.

[Lucky]

Surely the same proportion to water, but only an overall tiny amount in proportion to "regular" machines? :)
OK, perhaps I should have said "In order to be in proportion to the amount of water, only a tiny amount of detergent would be used".

I think my use of the comma precludes the meaning you inferred .... and which one of us is being pedantic?! ;)



Wouldn't the amount of detergent be proportional to the amount of dirt?
No, because the wetting and cleaning effects of the water/detergent mix don't increase by over-concentrating the detergent.

[Matty1973]

If the detergent was still in proportion to the water then wouldn't the claim be a 98% reduction of water and detergent? This would be even more amazing.

I must confess to still being skeptical. As they say 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' - I do hope it is basically true, but I would imagine there is some kind of cost involved which may be a poorer standard of cleaning, damage to the clothes, expensive/toxic ingredients in the chips, high energy cost or some other kind of negative side effect. All pure speculation though.

Lucky - You are based in Yorkshire as is the university in question. I hope that connection is not making you a bit under-skeptical!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqrOJLUibjo
"Don't talk to me about sophistication? I've been to Leeds!"
Apologies for the unwarranted personal attack but that was a funny sketch!

[Evilgiraffe]

I assumed the plastic did an electrostatic more than abrading. Sort of like the way they use resin beads to soften water, the minerals stick to the resin?

As far as I knew, water softening resins actually do ion-exchange.

The polymer matrix is stuffed with Na+ ions that exchange with the nasty scum-forming Ca2+ ions. Since two Na+ ions have to be exchanged for every Ca2+ ion, the water ends up with twice as many ions in solution as it started with. More enthalpy of solvation and more entropy driving the process to the exchanged state.

Powder detergents perform the same trick with zeolitesWP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite) (molecular sieves). A good proportion of powder detergent isn't detergent at all, it's Na-containing zeolite that softens the water before the wash cycle starts.

[EHocking]

OK, perhaps I should have said "In order to be in proportion to the amount of water, only a tiny amount of detergent would be used".

I think my use of the comma precludes the meaning you inferred .... and which one of us is being pedantic?! ;)Oh, most definitely myself in this case!
No, because the wetting and cleaning effects of the water/detergent mix don't increase by over-concentrating the detergent.Well, I believe that this is the European Patent (http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=WO2007128962&F=0) I don't believe it helps much, the abstract is a load of gobbledygook. OK, I can understand it, I presume it's written in such a wibbly wobbly way so as to cover any attempts of idea theft by embracing as many variations of each of the variables in the statement. For instance, "substrate". They did indicate that the technology was not able to applied to cleaning clothes but stripping dyes and other contaminants from solutions.

But still...

Abstract of WO2007128962
The invention provides a method and formulation for cleaning a soiled substrate, the method comprising the treatment of the moistened substrate with a formulation comprising a multiplicity of polymeric particles, wherein the formulation is free of organic solvents. Preferably, the substrate is wetted so as to achieve a substrate to water ratio of between 1:0.1 to 1:5 w/w. Optionally, the formulation additionally comprises at least one cleaning material and, in this embodiment, it is preferred that the polymeric particles are coated with the at least one cleaning material. Preferably, the cleaning material comprises a surfactant, which most preferably has detergent properties. Most preferably, the substrate comprises a textile fibre. Typically, the polymeric particles comprise particles of nylon, most preferably in the form of nylon chips. The results obtained are very much in line with those observed when carrying out conventional dry cleaning processes and the method provides the significant advantage that the use of solvents, with all the attendant drawbacks in terms of cost and environmental considerations, can be avoided.

[Olowkow]

Apparently, it takes a special washing machine:

http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/xeros-the-one-cup-water-washing-machine-concept/
I really wish guys with new inventions would just come out with a demo and explanation of their device. The Xeros website is very meager. I am very skeptical of this. It seems that one cup of water would just be absorbed by one or two socks, and the clothes would rattle around with the chips. I'll believe it when I see it.

[XBoxWarrior]

It seems that one cup of water would just be absorbed by one or two socks, and the clothes would rattle around with the chips.

My thoughts exactly!

But if they are "magic" chips...:rolleyes:

[casebro]

Okay, after a bit of conceptualizing: Most of the water in a washer is used for momentum, to force a lesser amount of the water through the cloth. The plastic beads are just about the same specific gravity as water, so will act as a replacement for most of the water. Use the beads instead, re-cycle the beads for each load, save a bunch of water. Same process for the rinse cycle, only now force clear water into the fabric. Again, use more water to rinse than to wash. Make the beads of a material that is softer than cotton, so the beads wear instead of the cloth. Clothes shouldn't be worn any worse that of water is used, since the beads have no more impact then water. Plus, will be lubed with sopy water. Dirtier clothes will need more water and soap, in proportion to amounts of dirt. Plus more to rinse. I don't know about 98%, but I could see 60-70? The only mod to the washer would be a filter system to prevent the beads from clogging the pump. Plus, probably a special dryer to catch the beads that pour out of the pockets while being tumbled.

Lately I've just read that 70% of water is used outside the home (green lawns), then much for flushing toilets. Then showers. I don't see that saving 98% of the minor amount used for laundry will help suburbia. But it will be different when 'we' outlaw green lawns.

Hey, anybody use a flushless urinal? Filled with a liquid polymer that floats on water, the urine sinks through to the sewer. I only used one in a high school, but I could use one at home.

[GreyICE]

Hey, anybody use a flushless urinal? Filled with a liquid polymer that floats on water, the urine sinks through to the sewer. I only used one in a high school, but I could use one at home.
Please don't buy these. They require a reasonably expensive cartridge that is destroyed by most common cleaning products. That makes them an utter pain in the neck to take care of and an ongoing expense.

Purchase Zurn's 1/8th gallon per flush urinal. It's cheaper, it costs less in the long run per year, and it is a great conservation measure.

[Matty1973]

This story has resurfaced, although the claim has been 'watered down' from 2% to under 10% now.

The claim is still that it 'could be released next year' exactly as was claimed this time last year. When do University Professors have to start submitting applications for extending their funding? Smells like another Steorn to me.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greenerliving/5597786/Washing-machine-that-uses-one-cup-of-water.html

[Dr. Trintignant]

Ahahaha.

No really, the atmospheric pressure is 14 pounds per SQUARE INCH. Assuming your proposed dryer is a perfect sphere with 5 cubic feet of interior space, it needs to be able to resist 21 TONS of atmospheric force pressing on the outside of said sphere.

It's not quite as bad as that. If I'm reading this phase diagram correctly, water will boil away, at room temperature, at around 0.3 atmospheres. So it's really more like 15 tons of force. And that's really not all that much when it comes down to it, for a well-engineered device--a 40" CRT faces a much more serious problem, since it has to resist a good vacuum with a nearly flat surface--and yet those are common and fairly cheap (relative to scientific equipment and such). A perfect steel sphere could handle 15 tons no problem. You could even get away with pretty thin sheetmetal if you added folded metal supports to prevent buckling, the way car bodies are engineered.

With this device, you could even reclaim some of the energy by running the air through a turbine generator when bringing the chamber back to atmospheric pressure.

Incidentally, vacuum chambers are not always small (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/orion/vacuum_chamber.html).

- Dr. Trintignant

[BenBurch]

Dr. Trintignant - That reminds me a bit of the anechoic chamber we had at Zenith.

That was SPOOKY inside. Absolutely dead silent.

[CelticRose]

I don't know. It doesn't sound like it would be very good for the clothing.

Also, if your clothes come out of the washer almost dry, you're going to end up spending a lot of time ironing, which is going to use energy, and some water if you're steam-ironing.

It also doesn't sound very sanitary. You're meant to reuse these plastic chips that have absorbed dirt and germs. One of the reasons we use hot water to wash clothes is to kill and wash away dirt, germs, and dust mites.

[Dr. Trintignant]

Dr. Trintignant - That reminds me a bit of the anechoic chamber we had at Zenith.

That was SPOOKY inside. Absolutely dead silent.

Always wanted to go inside one of those. It's amazing how echoey most places are, to the point where just talking sounds "wrong" when you take away the sound reflections. I've been in some fairly non-echoey rooms but not a true anechoic chamber.

- Dr. Trintignant

[ben m]

With this device, you could even reclaim some of the energy by running the air through a turbine generator when bringing the chamber back to atmospheric pressure.

There are thermodynamic costs you're forgetting about with this system.

If you just put wet clothes into a vacuum chamber, sure, they'll evaporate until the pressure is 20 torr or so---water's vapor pressure at room temperature. Then you don't have a vacuum chamber any more, you have a 20-torr chamber, and water doesn't evaporate at room temperature in a 20-torr chamber.

To get more water to evaporate, you have to pump the chamber down. To do that, you stick a piston into the chamber (at 20 torr) and use a motor to pull it towards the outside (at 760 torr)---i.e. you're moving something against a pressure-differential, that's work, and that takes energy. You can't get that energy back.

How much energy does it take? Go back to heat engines; this is a thermodynamic cycle. It is going to work out such that (modulo various places you can recover some of the energy) it takes the same amount of energy as *heating up the clothes* to drive the water off.

Now, it's not true that your dryer just "heats up clothes to drive the water off"---it heats up air to heat up the clothes, lets that heat drive the water off, then expels the heated air along with the water vapor. In principle you should be able to draw your dryer's *inlet air* through a heat exchanger, and try to recover most of the heat. That'd be a big, big gain over a regular dryer. I suspect a vacuum-equipped dryer would be somewhere in between---more efficient than an expel-hot-air dryer, less efficient than a regular dryer with a heat exchanger.

[Dr. Trintignant]

There are thermodynamic costs you're forgetting about with this system.

Well, I only said "some" :-). Those are excellent points, though. I had in fact forgotten that, once the water boils away, it's still trapped in the chamber, so you have to continue pumping that out of the system.

You're right; a heat exchanger dryer could be extremely efficient. In principle, a countercurrent heat exchanger can be very close to 100% efficient, so the only intrinsic losses are those relating to actually separating the water from the fabric (and, I suppose, heating the clothes initially).

I suspect a vacuum-equipped dryer would be somewhere in between---more efficient than an expel-hot-air dryer, less efficient than a regular dryer with a heat exchanger.

That seems right. Efficient heat exchangers are easier than efficient vacuum pumps, but both are better than just venting the hot air. Of course, the vacuum dryer could have an advantage in being more gentle on clothes.

- Dr. Trintignant

[BenBurch]

Now, if clothes had no metallic fasteners or metallic threads, a microwave drying system might be more efficient...

[Just thinking]

Washing machines can do more than clean clothes ... they can sanitize, with bleach. How would this work out using chlorine bleach on whites? Even front loading washers use enough water to evenly dispense the bleach ... but with the little amount this device claims, I'm not so sure.

[Here_to_learn]

You're right; a heat exchanger dryer could be extremely efficient.I'm not sure if I'm missing something here, but condensation dryers has been around for quite some time now, I'm in to at least my second, so that's some 10-15 years. Especially winter time I keep the heat generated indoors, instead of trying to heat up the garden.

Heat Pump driers is the next step in moving from a passive heat exchanger. Í haven't tried one so I have not experience on how well they work.

[ben m]

I'm not sure if I'm missing something here, but condensation dryers has been around for quite some time now, I'm in to at least my second, so that's some 10-15 years. Especially winter time I keep the heat generated indoors, instead of trying to heat up the garden.

(Googles for it) Hey, neat.

I had heard of the water-cooled ones---which don't save that much energy---but I didn't realize that there were air-cooled ones as well. If I'm thinking straight, they'll behave the same way, thermodynamically speaking, as a once-through heat exchanger, but not as well as a countercurrent exchanger.

[PbFoot]

Ahahaha.

No really, the atmospheric pressure is 14 pounds per SQUARE INCH. Assuming your proposed dryer is a perfect sphere with 5 cubic feet of interior space, it needs to be able to resist 21 TONS of atmospheric force pressing on the outside of said sphere.

Vacuum chambers tend to be small for some reason...

This system does seem interesting. Guess it depends on how cheap/easy the chips are to produce.

I work on autoclaves for bio/pharma use everyday. Some are big enough to drive a car into. They develop a vac. of 30 inHg to dry the load. (It takes a lot of electricity and a big 3 phase vac pump to get that.)

-PbFoot

[Lucky]

This story has resurfaced, although the claim has been 'watered down' from 2% to under 10% now.

The claim is still that it 'could be released next year' exactly as was claimed this time last year. When do University Professors have to start submitting applications for extending their funding? Smells like another Steorn to me.

Seriously, this is plain absurd.

So, the conspiracy has now widened from merely Professor Burkinshaw (http://www.engineering.leeds.ac.uk/imr/people/burkinshaw/burkinshaw.shtml), his department (http://www.engineering.leeds.ac.uk/speme/index.shtml) at the University of Leeds (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/), Xeros (http://www.xerosltd.com/index.htm), and their commercial backers IP Group (http://www.ipgroupplc.com/ipo/). Apparently it now includes the prestigious Cambridge Consultants (http://www.cambridgeconsultants.com/index.php) and Xeros's new commercial partner GreenEarth (http://www.greenearthcleaning.com/) (and perhaps GreenEarth's partner Proctor & Gamble (http://www.greenearthcleaning.com/about_partners.aspx)?).

A quick google would have found the University's new press release (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/media/press_releases/current09/xeros.htm), Cambridge Consultants' report (http://www.cambridgeconsultants.com/news_pr246.html) and GreenEarth's statement (http://www.greenearthcleaning.com/about_press_details.aspx?pressid=36). You would have learnt about the partnership with GreenEarth (the reason for the press release), Cambridge Consultants' stunning contribution in solving the essential problem (how to extract your balls from your washing!) and moving the project to the next stage, and the commercial potential for the process in (almost) dry cleaning.

I thought the 'skepticism' shown by the OP and others a year ago was a bit daft - and it's been blown out of the water ;) by events over the year. There is absolutely nothing suspicious about Professor Burkinshaw, his research, the product or the company. And - for reasons too many and too obvious to detail - the thing does not map in any meaningful way to the Steorn saga.

Of course, we should remain cautious about how well the technology will perform in practice. It's far from impossible that some intractable problem will turn up that precludes the process from ever getting into your domestic washing machine (that's the way R&D goes). It certainly isn't looking that way, though. It looks to me that the promise of a year ago is being justified as far as could reasonably be expected.

You know, commercially exploitable research and innovation is one of the things we still do rather well in this country. I'd rather you would celebrate this, instead of displaying an almost pathological 'skepticism' towards UK innovation (sadly, shared by UK funding providers).

[GreyICE]

I work on autoclaves for bio/pharma use everyday. Some are big enough to drive a car into. They develop a vac. of 30 inHg to dry the load. (It takes a lot of electricity and a big 3 phase vac pump to get that.)

-PbFoot

There must be some redefinition of 'tend to' into 'absolute law' that no one told me about, because you're like the third person in this thread to make that mistake.

[Matty1973]

I thought the 'skepticism' shown by the OP and others a year ago was a bit daft - and it's been blown out of the water ;) by events over the year. There is absolutely nothing suspicious about Professor Burkinshaw, his research, the product or the company. And - for reasons too many and too obvious to detail - the thing does not map in any meaningful way to the Steorn saga.



The original claim was reducing to 2% of the water usage during 2009, now the claim is 10% by late 2010.
I stand by my skepticism of the original claim. The new claim sounds a lot more reasonable but based on the past claim I maintain some sktepticism.

My analogy to Steorn is that they spend their time researching and raising funds through publicity for fanatasical claims. It is not unknown for research teams (both academic and private sector) to continue looking for funds to extend their comfortable research contracts long after they know the project is going to end up in failure. What made me curious in this case was that it was exactly 12 months after the previous publicity that the new article was released. That may well be a coincidence or it could also be that June is the time of year that further funding from the backers (IP Group) is required.

I should stress I have no personal knowledge of that being the case here - I would be delighted if this end up in success. It would be a truly revolutionary http://forums.randi.org/images/icons/icon12.gif product.

Lucky - For transparency may I ask if you have any personal connection to the University?
(My reason for asking being that you are both knowledegable and passionate on the topic but also you come from the same area)

[Skeptical Greg]

Seriously, this is plain absurd......

There is absolutely nothing suspicious about Professor Burkinshaw, his research, the product or the company.
.... And we should take your word for that ---- because ?

...... It looks to me that the promise of a year ago is being justified as far as could reasonably be expected.

No, a reasonable expectation would be this year as promised; not another year ..

[Cuddles]

Also, if your clothes come out of the washer almost dry, you're going to end up spending a lot of time ironing, which is going to use energy, and some water if you're steam-ironing.

What is this "ironing" you speak of?

[Here_to_learn]

What is this "ironing" you speak of?Ironing: Verb - to produce smooth irony.

[CelticRose]

What is this "ironing" you speak of?
What you have to do if your clothes dryer doesn't work right. ;)

I don't iron either, except for a few pairs of dress slacks that have to drip-dried. Darn dress codes!

[Dilb]

How much energy does it take? Go back to heat engines; this is a thermodynamic cycle. It is going to work out such that (modulo various places you can recover some of the energy) it takes the same amount of energy as *heating up the clothes* to drive the water off.

There's no reason for that to be the case. As long as the humidity is below 100%, clothes dry spontaneously: no free energy is required. While it does take energy to evaporate the water, this energy will come from the environment. If we needed to evaporate some water in a sealed system at 100% humidity then yes, we'd have a specific thermodynamic goal to accomplish, but that's not what a typical dryer is doing. What a vacuum or a heating dryer does is speed up the rate of evaporation.

Evaporation is basically proportional to the vapour pressure of water minus partial pressure of water vapour at the liquid surface. We can speed up drying by increasing the vapour pressure (heat), decreasing the partial pressure everywhere (vacuum), or decreasing the partial pressure near the surface (convection, i.e. blowing on it, or tumbling). A vacuum isn't even necessary: the only thing that matters is the partial pressure of water vapour: a dehumidifier will accomplish the same thing as a vacuum pump.

In regards to condensation dryers, they are essentially just closed loop dryers with a passively cooled dehumidifier. Instead of the process of

ambient air in -> air heated -> hot air dries clothes -> warm moist air vented

they go

internal air heated -> hot air passes over clothes -> warm moist air passes over condenser -> repeat

The advantage is that they don't need to vent moist air, not that they are more energy efficient. There's not much a lot of energy that could be saved by using a heat exchanger to heat the dry loop air with the moist loop air, because of the cooling effect of evaporation.

You can improve on this, though. A heat pump can use some of that energy. Instead of external air doing the cooling, it's the cold side of the heat pump, and instead of electric/gas adding heat to the hot air, it's the hot side of the heat pump. The condensing water actually helps to 'warm' the cold side of the heat pump, despite it being at a lower temperature. It's also not venting moist air, and a fair bit of energy can be saved.

[Lucky]

And we should take your word for that ---- because ?
I don't suggest you take my word - that's why I supplied links. Do your own research.

No, a reasonable expectation would be this year as promised; not another year ..
The new technology could be on the UK market as early as 2009.
"As promised"?

You clearly have no knowledge of the process (and the challenges, pitfalls and delays) in bringing scientific innovations to the marketplace. I'd say this one has gone impressively quickly from the first press release to a working prototype and a major commercial partnership.


My analogy to Steorn is that they spend their time researching and raising funds through publicity for fanatasical claims
That's wrong in every possible way.

Professor Burkinshaw and his department spend their time teaching, researching, and publishing scientific papers. The funds for further development of the Xeros process (which are completely separate from other research and teaching funding) are not raised through 'publicity', but through establishing the science (in peer-reviewed publications) and the technological potential (by prototypes and demonstrations). Also, the basic claim is not in any way 'fantastical'.

Matty1973, you have to take press releases from any University about scientific research (and probably any other sort) with a pinch of salt. I have found the following rule of thumb useful over the years: unless a claim is in quotes, with a researcher's name attached to it, it doesn't come from the research team - it's an oversimplification, gross exaggeration or misunderstanding, by the press office. I wish this were not the case, but you get used to it in time - it's just like reading or watching adverts and extracting the nuggets of information from the dross.

I'm not suggesting the press release includes downright lies, but you can imagine the brief telephone interview with Prof Burkinshaw:

Reporter: So you're saying that your invention will lead to a new kind of washing machine that uses much less water?
Prof: Sort of - the way it works is {scientific explanation that doesn't make it into the press release}
Rep: Ah, a good angle. What would you say is the least amount of water it will need if everything works according to theory?
Prof: Well, theoretically the amount of water needed to wet the fabric wouldn't be much more than a cup or so. Of course, we couldn't get anywhere near that in practice, because {more scientific explanation that doesn't make it into the press release}

What somewhat got up my nose (and please excuse me for being a bit snippy in my previous post) was your assumption that you could meaningfully relate a prestigious University department, and a researcher with expertise, international academic recognition and many peer-reviewed publications, to the Steorn frauds.

I doubt it's Prof Burkinshaw's fault that his process is being promoted with sloppy journalism and a rather imaginative claim (though I'm not too keen on the Xeros website - it's a bit too slick, and lacking in detailed science, for my taste). In Steorn's case, though, the problem isn't with publicity, reporting or misrepresentation (by a third party), it's that the 'process' itself has no basis in fact.

(btw, I could find nothing in this latest round of media reports to suggest that anyone had bothered to contact either the University research team, Cambridge Consultants or GreenEarth for information, rather than simply cloning the press releases - that's 'science journalists' for you.)

Let's have a look at your supposedly similar cases:

| | Steorn free energy technology | |Xeros cleaning process
Company | | Steorn: a former dot.com business | | University of Leeds: Russell Group (http://www.russellgroup.ac.uk/about.html) University; Textile Department (in the Institute for Materials Research): long-established (1887) and internationally-recognised centre of innovation and excellence in textile technology
Track record and expertise of 'inventor' in relevant scientific field | | Sean McCarthy, CEO Steorn: none | | Prof Burkinshaw, Head of Textile Chemistry: leading academic in the field, numerous relevant publications, previous commercialised innovations
Plausibility of 'invention' | | Proven to violate laws of physics | | Doesn't violate any scientific principles; related to existing consumer technology (e.g. colour-catchers)
Motive for pulling scam that's certain to be exposed within a year or two | | Short-term financial gain; publicity stunt to build up their business, perhaps as marketers of 'unusual' technology; (also possible they're all bonkers) | | Can't think of any
Reason for not pulling this scam | | Might not work | | Public disgrace for individuals and institutions, possible prosecutions and sackings
Progress of 'product' | | None - no successful demonstrations, no commercial interest from industry (all funding from individual backers of 'exotic' ventures)| | Backed by technology-transfer experts IP Group (http://www.ipgroupplc.com/ipo/); partnered with Cambridge Consultants (http://www.cambridgeconsultants.com/index.php) to produce successful prototype; commercial partnership with dry-cleaning licensors GreenEarth (http://www.greenearthcleaning.com/about.aspx)

Now, don't you think your analogy was just a wee bit fanciful?

Several posters in this thread don't seem to understand what technological innovation is about. You take risks. You very often begin with an idea that seems 'fanciful', and it may turn out that it actually is fanciful - so you write off the loss and go onto the next idea.

Critical thinking isn't about being equally 'skeptical' of all unusual claims - that's just a mirror-image of the lack of judgement that causes 'woos' and cranks to embrace pseudoscientific nonsense. I think that anyone claiming the title 'skeptic' is taking on some responsibilities - including doing some research before rubbishing any novel technological claim that doesn't obviously violate any scientific principles.

[Matty1973]

What is an analogy? (http://grammar.about.com/od/rhetoricstyle/f/qanalogy07.htm)

"... an analogy is a comparison between two different things in order to highlight some point of similarity."

I am quite prepared to admit there are many ways in which the two cases are different, but the analogy was proposed to highlight a possible point of similarity as explained in post 39. Your comments and links do reassure me that this is unlikely to be the case but ultimately the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

In your chart you say that you "can't think of any" reason for researchers to be "scamming" their investors - yet this is the very point of the analogy (post 39). Even if it is not the case here it is still a valid possible reason. You say it would be "certain to be exposed with in a year or two" - not necessarily since you also say "It's far from impossible that some intractable problem will turn up that precludes the process from ever getting into your domestic washing machine (that's the way R&D goes)".

Your defense of the original claim is to be honest laughable. To say it is only the Universtity's Press Office so it is not reliable is quite incredible. The information has been in the public domain for over a year now - can you give an example where Professor Burkinshaw has publically distanced himself from the "Press Office's claims"?

You tell us to "Do your own research" - yet not to even trust the University Press Office (which you quoted yourself in your very first post). Are we all meant to go direct to Professor Burkinshaw? Remember you were the one that brought his good name into this discussion. My original skepticism was directed at the claims made in an article, not personal to him. Rather than go on the defensive on his behalf may be then you should have suggested the claims were not from him but instead from the Press Office. Waiting until after the claims prove false and then bringing it up makes it sound like an excuse.

"Critical thinking isn't about being equally 'skeptical' of all unusual claims" - I totally agree - Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - that's why I was highly skeptical of the original claim and less so of the more recent less extraordinary claim. Will you acknowledge that rather than being 'overly skeptical' of the original claim I was in fact correct?

[rjh01]

Just found this thread again. Looks like it does not use much detergent so no need to rinse. However one cup of water it uses is far less than 10% of the water used in a normal wash. So which is correct?
If the clothes are dirty there will be lots of dirt removed. Where does it go? I suggest that the beads will want washing to remove this dirt.
How do the beads fall though the mesh after the wash? Some would be caught in the clothes and need to be manually removed.

I suggest that there is a lot not said in the article.