A novel design of a household clothes tumbler dryer

This paper explores the feasibility of a novel design of household clothes tumbler dryer, where the electrical elements of a standard tumbler clothes Dryer A (which heat the ambient air entering the drum) were replaced by a water-to-air finned tube heat exchanger (Dryer B). To achieve the objective of the study, experimental performances of the two dryers (e.g., Dryers A and B) were evaluated for the same operating conditions. During the experiments, Dryer B was found to have shorter drying times, lower moisture extraction rates for the same power input and hence significantly more efficient than Dryer A. This type of dryer may be adopted by the industry in the future for its relatively low cost, higher energy efficiency and environmental benefits.