JP2540591B2 - Clothes dryer - Google Patents

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a hot-air type clothes dryer for domestic use, commercial use or industrial use, and particularly realizes energy saving by preventing external dissipation of heat energy. It relates to a clothes dryer.

(Prior Art) As a clothes dryer, there is a drum type clothes dryer which is widely used for home use. The basic structure will be described with reference to FIG.

The clothes dryer 300 has a rotary drum 301 built in, and clothes 302 are put into and taken out of the rotary drum 301 through a door 303. The rotary drum 301 includes a small pulley 309, a belt 318, and a large pulley 310.
And rotation is provided by a motor 308 via a rotating drum shaft 317. Further, a fan 307 is attached to the motor 308, and the outside air 316 is sucked in from an intake port 315 and blows hot air 316 ′ of 60 to 80 ° C. into the rotary drum 301 via a heater 306 and a blowing nozzle 304.

The blown hot air 316 ′ is blown onto the clothing 302,
Moist hot air containing moisture evaporated from the clothes 302 is discharged from the exhaust system 314 through the filter 311 to the outside of the system. In addition to these, there are a bearing 312 for supporting the rotary drum shaft 317, a back plate 313 for fixing the bearing 312 and supporting the entire rotary drum 301 system, and the like.

If the clothes dryer having the above-mentioned structure is left as it is, it has a harmful effect of discharging the moist hot air into the room and raising the humidity and temperature inside the room. Therefore, it is usually connected to a duct and exhausted to the outside. This type is called a normal exhaust type, and its drying flow chart is as shown in FIG. 4 (a).

That is, the air 402 of 25 to 30 ° C. sucked by the fan 403 from the intake hole 401 is sent to the heater 404, heated to 60 to 80 ° C., and blown onto the clothing 406 in the rotary drum 405. This hot air mixes with the water vaporized from the clothing 406, becomes hot moist air at 40 to 60 ° C., and is discharged from the exhaust port 407. The harmful effect at this time is as described above.

In order to reduce this adverse effect, a clothes dryer called a dehumidifying type, which circulates in the system without discharging hot moist air, has recently become popular with respect to the exhaust type. This is to circulate moist hot air in the system without discharging the hot air out of the system. This dehumidifying type includes an air cooling type and a water cooling type, which are shown in FIGS. 4 (b) and (c), respectively. .

First of all, for the air-cooled type, the air 402 is the fan 403.
From the heater 404, the rotating drum 405, the clothing 406, the air / air heat exchanger 408, and the fan 403.
The water evaporated from is condensed by the air / air heat exchanger 408 and discharged from the drain pipe 411. Indoor air 409 is generally used as the cooling source of the air / air heat exchanger 408, and the fan 41
0 to the air / air heat exchanger 408. In this air-cooled dehumidifying dryer, heat-exchanged indoor air 409
However, there is a drawback that the temperature in the room rises because the temperature rises.

On the other hand, a dryer called a water cooling type dehumidifying type is as shown in FIG. 4 (c), and the only difference from the air cooling type is that the heat exchanger 412 is a water cooling type.
In the case of this water cooling type, the energy of the hot air in the system is
Since it is given to the water and discarded as hot water, it does not raise the room temperature unlike the air-cooled type. However, since tap water is generally used as cooling water,
Water saving methods such as using drainage water for washing machine washing water are adopted.

As a modification of the above dehumidifying type, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 54-150774
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 1994-242242 discloses a method in which a porous filter is provided at the opening of the drain pipe 411 and the condensed water is discharged by utilizing the capillarity in the filter. Alternatively, it relates to improvement of the passage of water already condensed by the hot air exchanger 412.

(Problems to be Solved by the Invention) The typical examples of the related art have been described above. In these conventional methods, regardless of whether the exhaust type or the dehumidifying type is used, 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 this temperature to 60 to 80 ° C.

The present invention has been made in view of such circumstances,
Only water is removed from the hot air of 40-60 ° C discharged from the rotating drum, keeping the hot air temperature at 40-60 ° C.
It is intended to reduce the above-mentioned heater load by sending it to the heater via a fan.

(Means for Solving the Problem) For this reason, the present invention provides a clothes dryer having a circulating hot air passage that connects a rotating drum that stores clothes, a fan, and a heater in this order to a circulating hot air between the rotating drum and the fan. A tubular porous membrane module is provided in the passage, and the tubular porous membrane module is a tubular porous membrane in which innumerable pores with a diameter of 10 to 50Å penetrate through the thick part between the inner peripheral surface and the outer peripheral surface. And a plurality of them are arranged in parallel, the inner peripheral surface of the tubular porous membrane can be communicated with the circulating hot air passage, and the outer peripheral surface of the porous membrane module can be sucked by a vacuum pump. A condenser is provided in the discharge passage to discharge the moisture in the exhaust gas of the vacuum pump as condensed water, which serves as a means for solving the problem.

(Operation) The steam in hot air is condensed on the inner peripheral surface of the heat-resistant porous membrane having a large number of 10 to 50Å pores arranged in parallel in the tubular porous membrane module, and the vacuum pump is drawn from the outer peripheral surface. The condensed water is re-evaporated to the reduced pressure side, and the water vapor in the hot air is removed as condensed water by the condenser provided in the discharge passage of the vacuum pump. At this time, the air is prevented from passing through the pores by the moisture, and no heat exchange action is exerted on the hot air, and only the moisture passes through the pores, so that the hot air temperature is not lowered.

(Example) Hereinafter, an example apparatus when the present invention is applied to a domestic clothes dryer will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 (a) is an external view of a tubular porous membrane having pores of 10 to 50Å used in the apparatus of this embodiment, and FIG. 1 (b) is a principle diagram of water removal by the tubular porous membrane. (C) is a correlation diagram showing the relationship between the membrane pore diameter and the water vapor condensation capacity. Also,
FIG. 2 shows a drying flow when the tubular porous membrane is modularized and incorporated into a home clothes dryer.

First, FIG. 1 (a) will be described. 100 is a tubular porous membrane having an infinite number of pores of 10 to 50 liters as described above, and examples of materials used include ceramics and polyimide.
When the wall cross section of the tubular porous membrane 100 is enlarged to the molecular level, it has a cross-sectional structure as shown in FIG. 2B, and its operating principle is that a condensate 102 is formed by capillary condensation of water vapor 101 on the hot air side (a). On the other hand, on the depressurization side (b), water content is 1
The model shows the situation where 02 re-evaporates.

At this time, since the pores are filled with water, hot air does not leak to the depressurization side (b). Capillary condensation is observed when the pore size of the porous membrane is in the range of 10 to 100Å as shown in Fig. 7 (c), but it corresponds to the substantial humidity change of the dryer (0.2 to 0.7 in P / P _s ). To remove water vapor, it is necessary to select a pore size of 10 to 50Å.

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

In this figure, the part different from the conventional device shown in FIG. 4 (c) is that the heat exchanger 412 and the like in FIG. 4 (c) are the tubular porous membrane module 201 and this tubular porous membrane module. Vacuum pump 208, fan 212 connected to 201
The air-cooled condenser 209 is replaced by the line-up, and other configurations are the same as the conventional ones. Therefore, the difference will be mainly described here.

The moist hot air of 40 to 60 ° C. discharged from the rotating drum 205 enters the tubular porous membrane module 201, passes through the inside of the tubular membrane 100 and is sent to the fan 203. When passing through the tubular membrane 100, According to the principle shown in FIG. 1 (b), the water vapor in the hot air is condensed in the pores on the inner surface of the tubular porous membrane 100, and the tubular porous body is depressurized to 1 to 10 mmH ₉ by the depressurizing action of the vacuum pump 208. It re-evaporates on the outer tube surface of the membrane 100. Then, the vaporized water vapor is sucked into the suction pipe 207, the vacuum pump 208, and the discharge pipe.
It becomes drain through 213 and condenser 209, and drain piping
Emitted from 210 into the atmosphere.

In this embodiment, the condenser 209 is configured to send the indoor air 211 by the air-cooled fan 212 to cool it.
Of course, this may be water-cooled.

The present invention is directed to a rotary drum 205 and a fan 203 containing clothes.
In the clothes dryer provided with the circulating hot air passage 202 connecting the heater 204 in this order, the tubular porous membrane module 201 is provided in the circulating hot air passage 202 between the rotating drum 205 and the fan 203, and the tubular porous membrane module 201 is In the thick portion between the inner peripheral surface and the outer peripheral surface, a large number of tubular porous membranes 100 having a diameter of 10 to 50Å through which a myriad of pores penetrate are arranged in parallel, and the tubular porous membrane 100 The inner peripheral surface can be communicated with the circulating hot air passage 202, and the vacuum pump 208 can be sucked from the outer peripheral surface of the tubular porous membrane module 201, and a condenser 209 is provided in the discharge passage of the vacuum pump 208. Same vacuum pump
The moisture in the exhaust gas of 208 can be discharged as condensed water 210.

In this example, a tubular membrane which has a good storage capacity and can be made compact as a membrane shape having pores of 10 to 50Å, for example, is disclosed in JP-A-61-238303 or JP-A-62-33521. Although a tubular porous membrane is adopted, it goes without saying that the same effect can be expected even with a hollow fiber membrane which has made remarkable progress in recent years.

Furthermore, in the present embodiment, the case where the present invention is applied to a home clothes dryer is illustrated, but the present invention should not be limited to home use, and the rotary drum type hot air clothes which are widely used industrially. It can be applied to a dryer (called a tumbler dryer, which is similar in principle and structure to that shown in FIG. 3) as it is, and any other circulating hot air other than the rotary drum type can be used. It will be apparent from the above description that it can be applied to a dryer.

By the way, a porous alumina tube (external diameter 10 mmφ, length 50 cm, which is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 62-33521, which has 10Å pores, is used.
The table below shows the results of dehumidification performance when the modules obtained using L) 30 and 41 were installed in a household dryer.

Further, in the apparatus of the above-described embodiment, the circulating air temperature sent to the heater is 40 to 60 ° C, which is higher than the conventional circulating air temperature of 25 to 30 ° C by 15 to 30 ° C, and therefore the set temperature to be raised by the heater is set. The temperature difference from 60 to 80 ° C is about half that of the conventional method, and the electrical energy required to raise the temperature is about half that of the conventional method.

(Effects of the Invention) As described in detail above, according to the present invention, it is possible to remove the water vapor in the circulating hot air without lowering the temperature of the circulating hot air. It has a great effect that it can be halved compared to a conventional dryer.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 (a) is an external view of a tubular porous membrane applied to the present invention, FIG. 1 (b) is a dehumidification principle diagram by the porous membrane, and FIG. 1 (c) is a pore diameter of the membrane and a water condensing ability. FIG. 2 is a drying flow chart showing an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 3 is a sectional view of a conventional household clothes dryer, and FIGS. 4 (a) (b) (c).
FIG. 4 is a conventional different drying flow chart. Description of main parts of the figure 100 …… Tubular porous membrane 201 …… Tubular porous membrane module 202 …… Circulating hot air 203 …… Fan 204 …… Heater 205 …… Rotary drum 208 …… Vacuum pump

Front page continuation (72) Inventor Yashiro Tsubaki, No. 1 Takamichi, Iwazuka-cho, Nakamura-ku, Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. Nagoya Research Laboratory (56) Reference JP-A-61-272099 (JP, A) Open Sho 62-33521 (JP, A) Actual Open Sho 62-143495 (JP, U)

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] 1. A clothes dryer having a circulating hot air passage for connecting a rotating drum containing a garment, a fan and a heater in this order, wherein a tubular porous membrane module is provided in the circulating hot air passage between the rotating drum and the fan. The tubular porous membrane module has a diameter of 10 to 10 in the thick part between the inner peripheral surface and the outer peripheral surface.
A large number of tubular porous membranes through which a myriad of 50 Å pores penetrate are arranged in parallel, and the inner peripheral surface of the tubular porous membranes can communicate with the circulating hot air passage, and the outer periphery of the porous membrane module. The clothes dryer is characterized in that a vacuum pump can be sucked from above and a condenser is provided in a discharge passage of the vacuum pump so that water in the exhaust air of the vacuum pump can be discharged as condensed water.