Regen Drive turns laundry green

High performance torque measurement is helping to improve the energy efficiency of domestic washing machines, enabling consumers to make greener purchase decisions.

The Eco Rating stickers that provide potential buyers with a clear assessment of white goods’ environmental performance now play a major role in retail sales. Manufactures want to achieve the best classification possible, so are redesigning their machines to reduce power consumption.

Technical Solution of Stoke-on-Trent began looking at the issue and came up with several initiatives that addressed different aspects of the situation. One idea involved technology transfer from other fields of engineering. Technical Director Andrew Stephen explains:

“Washing machines energy is delivered through their main drive motor and we reckoned that there may be some savings using sophisticated motor control.”

“Front loaders are – of course – horizontal axis, so the load, i.e. the wet laundry, is being lifted on one side of the axis and falling on the other side. We wondered if this offered possibilities for regenerative energy recovery, a technique we have used in many industrial projects.”