Miele unveils solar heated dryer

Dryers are a great way to get your clothes dried in a relatively short amount of time. However the costs of running a dryer constantly will definitely result in electricity bills that may give you a heart attack, which is why Miele has unveiled what they’re calling the “world’s first” dryer to use the heat of the sun to dry your clothes.

If that sounded a bit weird, they aren’t talking about the heat of the sun in the literal sense where you actually hang your clothes out in the backyard for it to dry, but instead it will utilize the heat gathered by rooftop solar-thermal collectors. Developed in a partnership with solar tech company, Solvis, the heat collected will be transferred to water in a stratified storage tank.

Four pipes are then connected to the tank and then to the dryer, with the first pipe bringing hot water to the dryer, where it heats the air in the tumbler via a heat exchanger. The water which has then been cooled will travel back into the tank via the second pipe where it will be heated again.

In order to extract the moisture from the clothes from within the dryer, a cold internal surface that is cooled with cold water is provided to cause condensation. When the water begins to warm up, it is returned back to the tank. The entire system is said to be loss-free, and the machine is said to operate at half the cost compared to a heat pump dryer.

If this sounds interesting, Miele mentioned that the dryer should be in the market some time in 2012, although we do not expect it to come cheap.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Green, Home
Tags: Solar