Method of cleaning textiles
AssigneeBowe Bohler & Weber KG Maschinenfabrik
InventorsHeinrich Fuhring, Johannes Helmut Sieber
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A load of garments or other textile material to be washed is presoaked in organic solvent, e.g. in a rotating drum, and is then immersed within the same vessel in a water bath while still permeated by a substantial quantity of solvent. During this immersion, the vessel is gradually heated to the boiling point of the solvent, or of the azeotropic water/solvent mixture, which is below the boiling point of water so that only a part of the wash liquor is vaporized. The evaporation can be accelerated by placing the vessel under a partial vacuum. The evaporation rate of the solvent is measured and the washing cycle is halted as soon as that rate drops to zero or below a predetermined limit, with subsequent drying of the load by, for example, centrifugation.
Claims5
A method of cleaning textiles, comprising the steps of:
- presoaking a load of textiles to be cleaned within a vessel in an organic dry cleaning solvent vaporizable, at least when in an aqueous azeotropic mixture, at a boiling point lower than that of water;
- removing excess solvent from the presoaked textiles while leaving some wetted with residual solvent;
- immersing the solvent-wetted textiles within said vessel in a detergent-enriched water bath with resulting transfer of residual solvent from said textiles to the bath;
- washing said textiles by agitation in said bath while increasing the bath temperature to a level below the boiling point of water but high enough to vaporize said solvent, thereby progressively depleting said bath of solvent;
- measuring the rate of vaporization of said solvent;
- and
- terminating the immersion upon a dropping of said rate to substantially zero.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.