Implementing sustainable laundering program for textiles in an impeller washer in China and saving energy

The cleaning process has a significant environmental impact due to the consumption of resources and chemicals. Laundering procedures were performed in a laboratory washing machine. Orthogonal experiment was carried out to select significant impact factors on washing efficiency and smoothness appearance, and an optimized program was generated according to the experimental results. Compared to the original program, energy consumption of optimized program was reduced by 23%, while the washing efficiency was remained the same. Smoothness appearance of cotton shirt was improved from grade 2.0 to 2.8, which could help to save ironing energy 2.4 kWh and reduce about 2.3 kg CO₂-equiv. of the whole lifetime (50 washes). The finding can provide fundamental information to develop a new washing program to achieve good cleaning performance and protect textiles.