Nearly Waterless Washing

摘要

Hotels, hospitals, and commercial cleaners do tons of laundry every day, leading to outsize utility bills and deluges of wastewater. Now Xeros, a startup spun out of the University of Leeds in Great Britain, is commercializing a process that replaces most of the water with rice - size nylon beads.rnMixed with mere squirts of deter-gent and water in the rotating drumrnof a modified washing machine, the pellets act like chemical magnets,rnabsorbing grime and soap as theyrntumble over fabric. When the wash is done, the beads are automatically collected through an opening in the drum.