{"id":76368,"date":"2018-03-21T08:07:02","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T18:07:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=76368"},"modified":"2020-01-13T14:17:55","modified_gmt":"2020-01-14T00:17:55","slug":"freshwater-rinse-is-real-laundry-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2018\/03\/21\/freshwater-rinse-is-real-laundry-hero\/","title":{"rendered":"Study says freshwater rinse is real laundry hero"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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Sangwoo Shin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Think you know how clothes are cleaned in a washing machine? A common understanding is that soil particles are detached from dirty clothes primarily through the use of laundry detergent in a swirling flow. However, a recently published research paper by a University of Hawaiʻi<\/span> at M\u0101noa<\/a> engineering scholar reveals that the true “hero” in the dynamic cleaning process may actually be a sudden surge of the freshwater rinse, which provides accelerated particle removal from the small pores of fabric.<\/p>\n

“The role of fluid flow in fabric cleaning has been regarded as a longstanding mystery in laundry detergency, so our discovery is significant that the pores within a fabric are so tiny that any fluid motion is nearly absent inside the pores,” said Sangwoo Shin<\/strong>, an assistant professor in mechanical engineering<\/a> at the College of Engineering<\/a>. “We’ve learned that it’s really the ‘change’ in the detergent concentration over time, through introduction of the freshwater rinse, that allows soil particles to be removed more effectively.”<\/p>\n

Shin’s finding, which is a collaborative effort with researchers at laundry detergent giant Unilever in the United Kingdom and Princeton University in New Jersey, is published in the current issue of Physical Review Applied<\/a>.<\/p>\n