This is something. But, we're not allowed to have clotheslines here!
Science
Skip the Wash Cycle — These Clothes Are Cleaned by Sunlight!
Posted on January 22, 2012 at 7:15am
by Liz Klimas
Some people still pin up cotton garments on the line to dry in the sun after washing. But what if you could skip the washing machine step and go straight to the line?
Researchers at Hubei University for Nationalities in Hubei, China, have developed a cotton fabric that gets cleaned and deodorized with just sunlight — even stains and bacteria are ousted.
According to the release appearing in the American Chemical Society’s Applied Materials & Interfaces, Mingce Long and Deyong Wu say their fabric uses a coating made from a compound of titanium dioxide. ACS reports that titanium dioxide is the white material used things like white paint and sunscreen. The compound is known to break down dirt and kills microbes when exposed to certain types of light, and has already found been used things like self-cleaning windows, kitchen and bathroom tiles and odor-free socks, according to ACS.
Popular Science reports that other research has shown titanium dioxide to clean fabrics, but it required exposure to ultraviolet light. Long and Wu’s material uses ordinary sunlight. Here’s how they modified it to work:
full story
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/skip-the-wash-cycle-these-clothes-are-cleaned-by-sunlight/
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