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Posted by z on September 25, 2006, 2:10 pm
Just wondering:
does it use more energy to dry my laundry in the drier, exhausting the
humidity outside, or to just hang them in the basement and let the
dehumidifier do the job, or is it the same? Assuming nice weather so
that you're not pumping out air you had to warm or cool, and that the
dehumidifier has enough excess capacity. I can't think of a basis to
differentiate.
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Posted by Frank on September 25, 2006, 2:52 pm
z wrote:
> Just wondering:
> does it use more energy to dry my laundry in the drier, exhausting the
> humidity outside, or to just hang them in the basement and let the
> dehumidifier do the job, or is it the same? Assuming nice weather so
> that you're not pumping out air you had to warm or cool, and that the
> dehumidifier has enough excess capacity. I can't think of a basis to
> differentiate.
Thermodynamically they should be the same, but since drier also ejects
hot air, the extra energy to just heat the air would favor drying in
the basement. Best thing to do is dry outside ;)
Frank
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Posted by z on September 26, 2006, 1:40 pm
Frank wrote:
> z wrote:
> > Just wondering:
> > does it use more energy to dry my laundry in the drier, exhausting the
> > humidity outside, or to just hang them in the basement and let the
> > dehumidifier do the job, or is it the same? Assuming nice weather so
> > that you're not pumping out air you had to warm or cool, and that the
> > dehumidifier has enough excess capacity. I can't think of a basis to
> > differentiate.
>
> Thermodynamically they should be the same, but since drier also ejects
> hot air, the extra energy to just heat the air would favor drying in
> the basement. Best thing to do is dry outside ;)
> Frank
Well, I don't know, though. The one way, you expend energy to heat the
air to evaporate the water...
the other way, the water evaporates by sucking heat out of the ambient
air, which you are not heating at this season (given the parameters of
my posted question) but you have to expend energy to condense the water
out of the air.
I guess if that was all there was to it, the second way would have to
expend more energy to cover entropy etc., but there are efficiency
questions involved.....
Life was easier in school when everything was frictionless, 100%
efficient, and spherical.
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Posted by The Reverend Natural Light on September 25, 2006, 2:53 pm
It would always use more energy to use a clothes dryer. All the heat
blown out the vent is lost. Not to say air drying inside won't cost as
well. The heat of evaporization will cool the air in the winter. In
the summer, the dehumidifier will add heat.
I wonder why we bother using heated air to dry clothes. Instead, seal
the dryer and evacuate all the air. In a vacuum, the water will boil
out of the clothes at room temperature. There will be zero heat or
stress to the clothes. Only the energy necessary to cause the state
change of the water, plus some loss in the hardware, will be used.
-rev
z wrote:
> Just wondering:
> does it use more energy to dry my laundry in the drier, exhausting the
> humidity outside, or to just hang them in the basement and let the
> dehumidifier do the job, or is it the same? Assuming nice weather so
> that you're not pumping out air you had to warm or cool, and that the
> dehumidifier has enough excess capacity. I can't think of a basis to
> differentiate.
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Posted by dpb on September 25, 2006, 3:06 pm
The Reverend Natural Light wrote:
...
> I wonder why we bother using heated air to dry clothes. Instead, seal
> the dryer and evacuate all the air. ...
Because the cost of building/maintaing a high-volume vacuum pump would
exceed that of a conventional drier by far more than the energy
savings...
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