If you are familiar with how a regular dryer works, you will know that heat is applied to wet clothes in order to turn the liquid into gas. The diffused water is called steam. What then is the purpose of designing a machine that apply more steam to dry clothes?
Steam is the resultant gas that is produced during the drying process. Steam is able to penetrate deeply into the fabric’s “pores”, giving it a moistened and softened effect that reduces the appearance of wrinkles. Aside from this, heat from the steam has a sanitizing effect on clothes, eliminating clingy germs and bad odors.
A steam clothes dryer, which produces more steam than conventional ones, makes fabrics come out softer,cleaner, and smelling fresh.
An LG steam dryer, a steam clothes dryer, for example, is so efficient that it has the ability to remove the smell of cigarette smoke off your shirt without even washing it in water or liquid detergent. The steam is powerful enough to remove the nasty smell in one 20-minute spin cycle.
A steam clothes dryer is very effective in removing wrinkles. It is not unusual to find your clothes hardened with wrinkles after leaving them in the dryer for a long time. Turning the steam dryer back on again can remove the wrinkles again.
Different models of steam dryers apply steam differently. For example, a Maytag steam clothes dryer doesn’t apply pure steam, rather they release a fine mist on wet clothes. The heat inside the machine turns the mist into steam. Some dryers make use of a steam generator to vent pure steam.
The steam dryers we’ve talked about so far don’t have the ability to really dry the fabrics. Steam just aids the drying process. However, a new drying technique has been developed. It uses superheated dry steam, which is pure gas without liquid properties, that causes water to evaporate.
A steam clothes dryer that uses superheating dry steam can dry clothes by just using steam. The superheated steam evaporates water and moisture out of the machine. The process is repeated until the clothes have completely dried out.
For now, a steam clothes dryer with built-in superheating system is intended for commercial use. Perhaps in time, they will be made available to the public for domestic use
