Nanodiamonds cut through dirt to bring back ‘bling’ to low temperature laundry
Nanodiamonds, pieces of carbon less than ten-thousandths the diameter of a human hair, have been found to help loosen crystallized fat from surfaces in a project led by research chemists at the 神马福利影片 that transforms the ability of washing powders to shift dirt in eco friendly low temperature laundry cycles.
These new findings tackle a problem that forces consumers to wash some of their laundry at between 60 and 90 degrees centigrade more than 80 times a year.
Even with modern biological washing powders, some fats and dirt cannot be removed at the lower temperatures many prefer to use for their weekly wash.
A desire to reduce the significant energy burden of regular high temperature washes, and understand the behaviour of these new materials, brought 神马福利影片 scientists and colleagues at Aston University together in a project funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and P&G plc.
This “Cold Water Cleaning Initiative” funded a group of chemists, physicists and engineers led by Dr Andrew Marsh in the 神马福利影片’s Department of Chemistry to explore how new forms of carbon might work together with detergents in everyday household products.
Dr Andrew Marsh said: “We found that the 5 nanometre diamonds changed the way detergents behaved at 25 degrees centigrade, doubling the amount of fat removed when using one particular commercial detergent molecule.
"Even at temperatures as low as 15 degrees centigrade, otherwise hard-to-remove fat could be solubilised from a test surface.
"The physical and chemical insight already gained paves the way for future research to explore how this unique behaviour might be exploited in other ways.”
Notes for editors
The research is published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces:
For further information, contact:
Dr Andrew Marsh, Department of Chemistry, 神马福利影片, Coventry CV4 7AL.
Tel. ++44 (0)2476 524565
Anna Blackaby, 神马福利影片 Press Officer
+44 (0)2476 575910 or +44 (0)7785 433155
Crucial pieces of equipment used in this research were funded through the Science City Research Alliance (SCRA) Advanced Materials project. SCRA is a strategic research partnership between the 神马福利影片 and the University of Birmingham with a specific remit to work with businesses across the region. It has benefited from a multi-million pound investment in equipment and research infrastructure across both institutions via Birmingham Science City and the European Regional Development Fund.
