Nanodiamond Additives for Cold Water Cleaning

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Cleaning clothes directly, or indirectly, affects everyone on the planet, making it hugely important in terms of energy and resource usage. Traditional methods of washing rely on high temperature, mechanical action and extended washing times - sometimes a tremendously social activity in the right environment, but one that we have come to realise has a negative impact in the way precious resources such as water, energy and even our time are used. An estimated 80% of the energy is used to heat water in a domestic wash and it is suggested that reducing a typical laundry cycle from 40 degrees C by 10 degrees reduces that energy usage by up to 40%. The technical challenge faced in a deceptively simple domestic wash is enormous. An average load contains 40 g of soil; heavily soiled washing may contain over 120 g, much of which comes from contact with our bodies. This soil and dirt is a complex, often poorly understood mixture of proteins, starches, carbohydrates, lipids, fatty acids, salts, clays and pigments, all associated with a wide range of fabrics. An equally complex mixture of detergents, enzymes and other chemicals that comprise a modern laundry agent are used to tackle the challenge of removing the soil and dirt from laundry fabric and keep it from re-entering cleaned clothes. In that process crystallized fat and lipid are the most difficult to remove at the low temperatures sought by the need to reduce energy and resource usage. It is precisely this challenge that we seek to address in our proposed research.Diamond and related synthetic carbon materials appear an unlikely choice of additive to the washing process, but they possess such special properties in terms of our ability to control very precisely their shape, size and surface chemistry that in fact they offer a fantastic opportunity. The materials we shall make are expected to interact with both the detergents used in the wash process and the unsolved problem of crystallized lipid particles on fabric in a unique way. Firstly they will make structures resembling small cells with the detergents and secondly these will aid the delivery of the nanodiamonds to the crystallized lipid adhering to the fabric. We shall use a combination of methods to study how the fluorescent nanodiamonds interact with the surface and then allow the lipid to be brought into solution. These include: a very sensitive method for measuring the amount of material adhering to a variety of test surfaces of differing underlying roughness and a means of directly observing the nanodiamond particles as they move across the 'soiled fabric' and lift off the grease. In this one-year, proof-of-principle project we shall develop both the new materials and methodologies to the point where we are able to say to what extent the novel additives bring about cleaning of the surfaces in a way that wasn't previously possible.In summary we believe that this innovation will be the step forward required to enable the removal of crystallized fat and lipid at much lower temperatures than currently possible. This has the potential to bring huge savings of energy and other resources to an essential, everyday task.