JPH01265999A - Clothes drier - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To reduce the electric energy necessary for drying clothes by half compared with the conventional method by installing a porous membrane in which countless pores of a specific diameter are penetrated, on the way of a hot air circulating passage in a drier, exposing one side to the circulating hot air while making the other side in a depressurized surface. CONSTITUTION:On the way of a hot air circulating passage from a rotary drum 205 in which clothes to dry are stored to a fan 203, a heat-resisting porous membrane 100 in which countless pores with the diameter 10-50Angstrom penetrate is installed exposing one side to said circulating hot air while making the other side in a depressurized surface, to remove the moisture in the hot air. That is, since the steam in the circulating hot air can be removed without reducing the temperature of the circulating hot air, the electric energy necessary for drying clothes can be reduced by half compared with the conventional method.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] (Industrial Application Field) The present invention relates to a hot-air clothes dryer for household, commercial, or industrial use, and in particular, to realize energy saving by preventing external dissipation of thermal energy. Regarding clothes dryers.

(Prior Art) As a clothes dryer, there is a drum-type clothes dryer that is widely used for home use. Its basic structure will be explained based on FIG.

The clothes dryer 300 has a built-in rotating drum 301, and clothes 302 are taken in and out of the rotating drum 301 through a door 303. The rotating drum 301 includes a small pulley 309, a belt 318, a large pulley 310, and a rotating drum shaft 31.
Rotation is applied by a motor 308 via 7. Furthermore, a fan 307 is attached to the same motor 308, and the outside air 3
16 through the intake port 315 and into the rotating drum 301 via the heater 306 and the blowout nozzle 304.
Blowing hot air 316' at ℃.

The blown hot air 316' is blown onto the clothing 302, becomes moist hot air containing moisture evaporated from the clothing 302, and is discharged out of the system from the exhaust port 314 via the filter 311. In addition to these, the rotating drum shaft 317
a bearing 312 for supporting the bearing 312; a bank plate 3 for fixing the bearing 312 and supporting the entire rotating drum 301 system;
There is a 13th mag.

If the clothes dryer with the above configuration is used as it is, it will discharge moist hot air into the room, increasing the humidity and temperature inside the room. The drying stream is called the normal exhaust type, and its drying flow diagram is shown in FIG. 4 (al).

That is, air 402 at a temperature of 25 to 30 degrees Celsius is sucked in by the fan 403 from the intake hole, and is sent to the heater 404 and heated to 6
Clothes 40 in a rotating drum 405 heated to 0 to 80°C
No. 6 is sprayed. This hot air mixes with the moisture evaporated from the clothing 406 and becomes moist hot air at a temperature of 40 to 60° C. and is discharged from the exhaust port 407. The disadvantages at this time are as described above.

In order to alleviate this problem, clothes dryers called dehumidifying type, which circulate humid hot air through the system without exhausting it, have recently become popular, as opposed to the exhaust type. This type of dehumidification circulates moist hot air within the system without discharging it outside the system.There are two types of dehumidification: air-cooled and water-cooled.
This is shown in (b) and (C) in the figure.

First, to explain the air cooling type, the air 402 is supplied by the fan 4.
03 to heater 404, rotating drum 405, clothing 406
, air/air heat exchanger 408 , and fan 403 , during which moisture evaporated from clothing 406 is condensed by air/air heat exchanger 408 and discharged from drain pipe 411 . The cooling source for the air/air heat exchanger 408 is generally indoor air 409 , which is fed to the air/air heat exchanger 408 by a fan 410 . This air-cooled dehumidifying dryer has a drawback that the indoor temperature rises because the heat-exchanged indoor air 409 rises in temperature.

In contrast, a dryer called a water-cooled dehumidifying type is shown in Figure 4 (
As shown in C1, the only difference from the air-cooled type is that the heat exchanger 412 is water-cooled.

In the case of this water-cooled type, the energy of the hot air in the system is the cooling water 4
13 and is discarded as hot water, so unlike air-cooled systems, it does not raise the temperature inside the room. However, since tap water is generally used as cooling water,
Water-saving measures are being taken, such as using wastewater for rinsing washing machines.

In addition, as a modification of the above dehumidifying type, JP-A-54-150
Publication No. 774 discloses a method in which a porous filter is provided at the opening of the drain pipe 411 and condensed water is discharged by utilizing the flat tube phenomenon within the filter.
It concerns an improvement of the passage of water already condensed by the air heat exchanger 408 or the hot air exchanger 412.

(Problems to be Solved by the Invention) The typical examples of conventional methods have been explained above, but in these conventional methods, regardless of the exhaust type or dehumidification type, the air entering the heater is at room temperature (25 to 30°C). Therefore, it is necessary to constantly supply electric energy to the heater to raise the temperature to 60 to 80°C.

The present invention was developed in light of this situation, and it removes only moisture from the moist hot air of 40 to 60 degrees Celsius discharged from the rotating drum, and turns on the fan while maintaining the hot air temperature at 40 to 60 degrees Celsius. The purpose is to reduce the load on the heater by sending it to the heater via the heater.

(Means for Solving the Problems) In order to achieve this object, the present invention provides numerous pores with a diameter of 10 to 50 in the middle of a hot air circulation path from a rotating drum storing clothes to be dried to a fan. The structure is such that a penetrating heat-resistant porous membrane is attached so that one side is exposed to the circulating hot air and the other side is a depressurizing surface to remove moisture from the hot air, and this solves the above problem. This is a means of resolving this issue.

(Function) Water vapor in hot air is condensed on one side of a heat-resistant porous membrane having 10 to 50 pores, and the other side is depressurized to re-evaporate the condensed water to the depressurized side. hand,
Removes water vapor from hot air. At this time, air is prevented from passing through the pores by the moisture, and the hot air does not have any heat exchange effect, and only moisture passes through the pores, so that the temperature of the hot air does not decrease.

(Example) Hereinafter, an example device in which the present invention is applied to a household clothes dryer will be described based on the drawings.

Fig. 1(a) is an external view of a tubular porous membrane with 10 to 50 pores used in the device of this embodiment, and Fig. 1(b) is a diagram of the principle of water removal using the tubular porous membrane. Figure (C1 is a correlation diagram showing the relationship between membrane pore diameter and water vapor condensation capacity. Figure 2 shows the drying flow when the above tubular porous membrane is modularized and incorporated into a household clothes dryer. ing.

First, FIG. 1 fa) will be explained. 100 is a tubular porous membrane having countless pores of 10 to 50 as described above,
Materials used include ceramic, polyimide, etc. When the wall section of this tubular porous membrane 100 is expanded to the molecular level, it has a cross-sectional structure as shown in the same figure (b), and its working principle is that a condensate liquid 102 is formed by capillary condensation of water vapor 101 on the hot air side (a). On the other hand, it schematically shows a situation in which water 102 re-evaporates on the reduced pressure side (b).

At this time, the pores are filled with water, so the hot air does not leak to the reduced pressure side (b). As shown in the same figure (C), capillary condensation is observed when the pore diameter of the porous membrane is in the range of 10 to 100 pores, but when the actual humidity change of the dryer (P/P, 0.2 to 0.2
In order to remove water vapor corresponding to 0.7), it is necessary to select a pore diameter of about 10 to 50.

Next, FIG. 2, which is a drying flow diagram of the present invention, will be explained.

In the figure, the difference from the conventional device shown in FIG. 4(C) is that the heat exchanger 412 and other parts in FIG. 4(C) are different from the tubular porous membrane module 201 and the tubular porous membrane module 201, an air-cooled condenser 209 using a fan 212, etc. have been replaced, and the other configurations are the same as before, so the above differences will be mainly explained here.

Humid hot air of 40 to 60°C discharged from the rotating drum 205 enters the tubular porous membrane module 201 and enters the tubular membrane 10.
When passing through the tubular membrane 100, the water vapor in the hot air flows through the narrow inner surface of the tubular porous membrane 100 according to the principle shown in FIG. 1(b). The tubular porous membrane 10 condenses in the pores and is reduced in pressure to 1 to 10 va H9 by the decompression action of the vacuum pump 208.
Reevaporates on the outer surface of the tube at 0. Then, the vaporized water vapor passes through the suction pipe 207, the vacuum pump 208, the discharge pipe 213, and the condenser 209, becomes a drain, and is discharged from the drain pipe 210 into the atmosphere.

In this embodiment, the condenser 209 is equipped with an air cooling fan 212.
Although indoor air 211 is sent to the room for cooling, it is of course possible to use a water-cooled system.

In this example, a tubular membrane having a membrane shape of 10 to 50 pores has good storability and can be made compact, for example, JP-A No. 61-238303 or JP-A No. 62-3.
Although the tubular porous membrane disclosed in Publication No. 3521 is used, the shape of the membrane is not limited to the tubular shape, and it should be noted that the same effect can be expected with so-called flat membranes or hollow fiber membranes, which have been significantly advanced in recent years. Not even.

Furthermore, although this embodiment exemplifies the case where the present invention is applied to a home-use clothes dryer, the present invention is not limited to home use, and the rotary drum type hot air dryer that is widely used industrially. It goes without saying that it can be applied directly to a dryer (called a tumble dryer, which is similar in principle and structure to the one shown in Figure 3), and furthermore, it can be applied to any other circulating hot air dryer other than the rotating drum type. It will be clear from the above description that the present invention can also be applied to dryers.

Incidentally, a porous alumina tube with 10 pores (outer diameter IQl and φ
, length 50 cmL) The table below shows the dehumidification performance results when the module obtained using 30.41 was installed in a domestic dryer.

In addition, in the above-mentioned embodiment device, the temperature of the circulating air sent to the heater is 40 to 60°C, compared to the conventional circulating air temperature of 25 to 3°C.
It is 15 to 30 degrees Celsius higher than 0 degrees Celsius, so the temperature difference between the heater's set temperature of 60 to 80 degrees Celsius is about % of the conventional temperature.
The electrical energy required to raise the temperature has been reduced by about half compared to conventional methods.

(Effects of the Invention) As described above in detail, according to the present invention, water vapor in the circulating hot air can be removed without lowering the temperature of the circulating hot air, thereby reducing the electrical energy required for drying clothes. This has the great effect of halving the cost compared to conventional dryers.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Figure 1 (al is an external view of the tubular porous membrane applied to the present invention, the same figure (bl is a diagram of the principle of dehumidification using a porous membrane, the same figure (C
1 is a correlation diagram between the pore diameter of the membrane and the water condensing ability, FIG. 2 is a drying flow diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 3 is a cross-sectional view of a conventional household clothes dryer, and FIG. al (b) (C)
is a different conventional drying flow diagram. Explanation of main parts of the figure 100 - Tubular porous membrane 201 - Tubular porous membrane module 202 - Circulating hot air 203 - Fan 204 - Heater 205 - Rotating drum 208 - Vacuum pump Figure 1 Figure 1 (C) Tsukihi thread opening diameter and water; hair fall force (P
7 ps ) (temperature i35'o) Moon moxibustion pore diameter (2r) Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4

Claims (1)

[Claims] A porous membrane having countless pores with a diameter of 10 to 50 Å penetrated in the middle of the hot air circulation path in the dryer is installed so that one side thereof is exposed to the circulating hot air and the other side is a depressurizing surface. A clothes dryer featuring: