Power Wash with Ultrafine Bubbles

Washing of surfaces and laundry is one of the promising areas were ultrafine bubbles can make a difference in the application.

Reducing the amount of detergent, has a positive effect by reducing pollution, washing laundry without detergent, would greatly benefit the environment. Ultrafine bubbles can lower the surface tension of water, the large amounts of oxygen molecules in bubbles charge the water negative.

Washing, detergents and ultrafine bubbles

Washing of surfaces and laundry is one of the promising areas were ultrafine bubbles "make a difference" in the future. Everybody knows but often doesn't realize that laundry wastewater contributes to a large part of water pollution. Reducing the amount of detergent, contributes to less pollution, washing laundry without detergent, greatly benefits the environment.

It's important to understand how a detergent works, to know why ultrafine bubbles can revolutionize the cleaning applications. An efficient washing process needs to do a series of actions: the first action, is the loosening of the dirt from the fabric. Next it has to spread the dirt out over all the water, also called emulsifying. After dispersing the dirt in the water, the last action in the cleaning process is holding the dirt in suspension. This is important because during rinsing the dirt should not stick again to the fabric.

For laundry water one of the important properties is the surface tension. Water has a high surface tension because of the strong cohesion between water molecules. When small quantities of water are on a surface, the water stays together as drops. A well know phenomena that we all have seen.

In the washing cycle it's not efficient when water drops stay together, water needs to spread-out by lowering the surface tension. A lower surface tension improves the wettability of water. To lower the surface tension today we add a detergent, and the important ingredient to lower the surface tension is a surfactant. Ultrafine bubbles can lower the surface tension of water, the large amounts of oxygen in the bubbles charge the water negative. An scientific approach to calculate the negative charge is to measure the zeta potential.

There are various surfactants and a detergent can contain multiple of them. Classification of surfactants properties in water are by their ionic or electrical charge. Anionic (negative charge), non-ionic (no charge), cationic (positive charge) and amphoteric (either positive or negative charge). A detergent has more ingredients than only surfactants, like bleaches, anti corrosion inhibitors, antimicrobial agents, softeners, fragrances, but for the scope of this article we will only focus on the surfactant as it's the most important one.

Read more and find more about ultrafine bubble laundry cleaning products: acniti

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Taxonomy

• Surfactants
• Cleaning
• Nano Bubbles
• ultrafine bubbles