For apartment goers (or those that live in uncooperative climates) the reliability of such a system is a bigger problem than the speed.

But for those that can use it, it is indeed a great system.

Hanging clothes in direct sunlight is overkill, and probably reduces their useful life due to the UV. All you need is sufficient moving air. I hang mine under the deck or just on racks indoors.

Once both my kids wet the bed every night for a week. 3 loads a day. Even on a sunny day in Scotland a duvet won't dry on the line in 1 day.

Lucky you. Try doing that in Chicago or Miami and your clothes will stink like holy hell thanks to the humidity.

I've heard it has anti bacterial properties as well. Unfortunately, they come at a pigment destroying cost.

Wasn't space fusion established as carcinogenic?

Doesn't the UV end up fading the colors?

Beamed energy is here!

Star based clothes drying is always better

We did that, right up until we had three kids and full-time jobs :)

And with the air mostly removed, you can spin the drum really really fast! I think you're on to something here. :P Maybe not.

I've done hundreds of solvent evaporations under vacuum (rotovap). The problem is you need a trap, or else solvents condense in the pump which causes your efficiency to go down. So now you need a heat pump or similar, now you're talking about a really complicated dryer. But it'd be efficient.

Can't you stick them in the microwave?

Bring em to your neighborhood pizza shop. They've got nice, hot ovens. Just don't burn your socks.

The career advancement of the scientists and engineers working on the project depend on publications and outreach like this. Source: I was a post-doc at a DOE lab.

GE appliances is already a Chinese company so pretty sure they have some chance to be the first to actually commercialize it. So no need to worry about China copying it..

Well I found this design from 2012: http://www.yankodesign.com/2012/03/01/ultrasonic-drying/

Looks Chinese to me.

even if they found out about it on the day of release they'd still out manoeuvre their American counterparts because.. cost.

This is how I dry all of my cycling kits, gloves, socks, warmers, etc. I have a four hanging drying racks [1] that I hang on the four ceiling fans in my home gym. The lycra dries in only an hour or two since there is airflow on all sides of the items. It makes for very efficient drying and it wholly prevents heat degradation of the lycra.

[1]: https://www.containerstore.com/s/stainless-steel-lingerie-dr...

But you cannot dump your clothes into the room and expect them to dry.

This is an interesting idea and probably would be useful but would only address people in single-family dwellings that don't share driers. I'm guessing that there is a reasonable use of clothes driers in commercial settings (laundry services) and shared driers in multi-family/large residential complexes (although many modern upscale projects have in-unit driers) where driers are shared.

Probably the best solution is a cultural shift to air drying. I was very surprised that when I was in the UK, a place not known for sunshine, many air dried their clothes, while when I lived in the desert of Eastern WA nearly everyone used a drier.

In Australia, that's very hard to achieve because the residential energy market is heavily regulated specifically to _avoid_ exposing low-end consumers to spot pricing.

Probably the same ultrasonics hat are used in humidifiers. Hint, they don't travel far.

As but the difference is in the amount of energy expended vibrating them no? It sounds to me more like vigorously shaking the water off the cloth fibers and then hoovering them up, which is much more energy efficient than heating said water until it turns into a vapor and hoovering it up.

The whole point of cooking food is to denature proteins and kill pathogens. Denatured proteins have exactly the same nutritional content as functional proteins: they're just not folded into their original and potentially dangerous shape anymore.

Maybe it will keep mice and bugs away while it is running.

But then you won't be able to dry your white clothes because your color piezo needs replacement.

You know what I want? A lemon law that states that major appliances need to run forever. Literally something that says, "This device must run without professional service for 25 years." Forget energy star stuff, 100Kwh saved a year is meaningless because we can always optimize powerplants. Stop building disposable 100LB metal boxes that have to get scrapped and thrown in a landfill. If the device fails earlier than that, the company has to replace it and pay a large fine for producing faulty equipment (larger than the profit from the device by an order of magnitude).

Then just allow people to rent the devices (which would obviously cost more) rather that have to buy them outright.

This is the main reason.

The difference in the longevity of my clothes -- same exact articles, same brand, same material, thickness, size and stitching -- from switching from a "hotbox" dryer to condensation dryer was initially amazing. No more did cuffs and collars start to crack and fail, nor did my shirts slowly develop small tears.

The latest (2014 is when they really started to hit the market) heat pump dryers dry clothes even cooler still, albeit since they're new tech they're quite a bit more expensive right now.

In Europe, a "condensation dryer" is so common, they're just called a "dryer", with no differentiating term. Additionally some countries (Switzerland I think) I believe don't even allow hotbox dryers anymore (and their needed conduit and vents) as part of fire/building code. Condensation dryers simply have a high quality lint filter (that truly does trap it all) and vent to atmosphere, since they just use a heat exchanger.

All while using far less electricity than simply heating things resistively.

What to batteries have to do with clothes dryers...? You're comparing a consumable good to a household appliance. Household appliances are expected to last 5 years. 7-10 is pretty normal.

Batteries not lasting long is considered a limitation of our current battery technology. This limitation doesn’t currently exist for typical clothes dryers.

There’s no reason to introduce a new limitation unless the technology makes up for it in other ways. Having to replace a clothes dryer every two years would require the technology to be very good to justify such a burdensome task.

Because dryers are expensive appliances. If they're going to make one that only lasts one tenth as long, it better cost one tenth of the price too.

This device is supposed to be eco-friendlier than a hot air dryer.

The benefit reduces if you have a consumable component that needs changing, especially with the amount of e-waste that goes to landfill.

Arranging large appliance delivery and disposal is a pain in the ass when you've got full time jobs to deal with. Don't want to do that any more than needed.

Batteries are also (relatively) cheap and easy to replace.

If my dryer was $50-$200 and could be carried in one hand, I'd be (grumpily) okay with it only lasting 2 years.

>> sonically baffle any outlet

Good point! The water vapour needs a way out. That means a direct air path between the fabric and the outside world. They cannot seal the entire thing in a vacuum bottle to deaden the sound. I see a 50' pipe full of baffles, a giant truck muffler, between this thing and anyone with eardrums.

Conventional driers also cause significant wear to clothes.

Give it a try: "600 Hz Sine Wave Sound Frequency Tone" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERHcqYNLHyg

and 500: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlEfshsoyZk

If that really is the range they are targeting, this product is doomed. That will be one heck of a noise to cancel. "Soundproof box" is right up there with perpetual motion, zero-point energy, and spherical chickens in vacuums.

That (the 600 Hz) is the modulation of the ultrasonic signal from the transducer...I am not sure if modulating the underlying signal at that frequency has a similar auditory effect as a simple 600 Hz sine wave.

Indeed that's what it says. That's neither ultrasonic nor easy to block with reasonable quantities of sound dampening materials.

They also directly mechanically couple the transducers to the fabric. You need as much area of transducer as fabric you need to dry, unless you have some automated way to place the fabric on the transducers sequentially.

To get the effect they want they have to use high frequency 30-40kHz (as in name, ultrasound). They modulate it with lower frequency (which probably splits off bigger water globs) for better efficiency or something. You won't be able to hear the modulating signal as you are not able to hear the carrier frequency.

That's definitionally not ultrasonic, so I don't think that's the relevant frequency.

I'm not sure that we can make an accurate judgement based on that because it's going to depend on the mic they used, audio codec, (and less relevantly), speaker setup and hearing of listener.

I don't understand why this is such a valued aspect of dryers. All clothes coming out of the dryer for me go right into my drawers / hanging. They don't get worn at the very earliest the next day. I rotate everything so I'm not just wearing the same socks and undies over and over again, so the vast majority of the time they don't even get worn then.

Is the psychological effect of folding warm clothes rather than cold really that powerful?

I didn't realize this, but yes, this is absolutely true. I wonder how many people would actually be willing to pay a premium on having their clothes warm when coming out of a dryer.