Combination effect of ultrasound and shake as a mechanical action for textile cleaning

• We apply ultrasound as a mechanical action for textile washing.
• Addition of shake to ultrasound can promote removal of oily and particulate soils from polyester and cotton fabrics.
• The fabric damage after ultrasonic washing is negligibly small.
• The ultrasound/shake action is useful for laundering from the viewpoints of adequate soil removal balanced with minimum damage.

The ultrasonic cleaning of artificially soiled fabrics with and without shake was carried out in an aqueous anionic surfactant solution. The polyester, cotton and polyester/cotton (65/35) fabrics were soiled with oleic acid or carbon black as a model soil, and cleaned together with their original fabrics with applying ultrasound for 5 min. The detergency and the soil redeposition were determined from the change in the Kubelka–Munk function of the soiled and original fabric surfaces due to the cleaning. For any fabric, the removal of oleic acid and carbon black from the soiled fabric and their redeposition onto the original fabric increased with increasing electric power consumption of ultrasound. When ultrasound and shake were applied at the same time, the detergency further increased for any electric power consumption. The maximum detergency obtained with combination of ultrasound 340 W and shake 160 spm was compared with detergency obtained with Wascator, a horizontal axis drum type washer. It was found that the ultrasound/shake combination cleaning enabled efficient removal of both soils from any fabric and the detergency of the polyester fabrics was comparable to that with Wascator. The mechanical action during the washing was evaluated by two mechanical action test pieces commercially available, which indicated that the ultrasound/shake combination cleaning provided gentle mechanical action to the fabric in comparison with the drum type washer. The SEM observations showed the damage of the fabric and fiber surfaces was negligibly small after the ultrasound/shake combination washing.