Tenside Surfact. Det.

2022; 59(2): 168–175

Textile Cleaning

Tobias Kimmel*, Christian Kunkel, Maryam Ait Sghir, Kevin Pauels and Arnd Kessler

Effect of the pre-treatment of stains with

ultrasound in household laundry cleaning
https://doi.org/10.1515/tsd-2021-2400 Ultrasonic (US) is used in many cleaning applications
Received October 19, 2021; accepted December 15, 2021 in a liquid bath, mostly for hard surfaces, i.e. industrial
component cleaning. The main effect is cavitation; in low
Abstract: The effect of three handheld ultrasonic devices pressure regions of the ultrasonic field steam bubbles are
for the pretreatment of stains on textiles was evaluated formed which collapse and produce fast water jets, shock
under household conditions. Twenty soiled textiles were waves and water currents. In liquids this takes place pre-
treated and the mean increase of lightness ΔL* of the dominantly at interfaces with high differences of acoustic
soiled textiles was used as a measure for the cleaning impedance between water and solid material.
effect. It was shown that the combination of a pretreat- Ultrasound is injected by a transducer into the liquid
ment and a washing cycle at 20 °C yields a higher mean and passed on to the materials that have to be cleaned. As
increase of lightness, ΔL* = 19.5, compared to a 40 °C the concentration of ultrasonic energy is the highest at the
washing cycle without pretreatment, ΔL* = 15.3. The effect transducer surface, cavitation is very likely to take place
is most pronounced for mixtures consisting of oily soils near this surface. In the US pretreatment procedures dealt
with pigments, ΔL* = 25.1. During the pretreatment, the with in this article, the soiled textile and the transducer
soil was soaked in a detergent solution and the effect of surface are in close contact.
soaking was measured separately. In washing drums for household application and
Keywords: pretreatment; textile washing; ultrasonic; washing tunnels for industrial washing, textiles are
washing performance. constantly mixed with a water-based washing solution in
an unstructured way so that several layers of textiles are
closely spaced. In particular, in horizontal axis drums this
leads to a high mechanical action because laundry items
1 Introduction are lifted in the drum and fall down on each other.
As ultrasonic is dampened by gas bubbles in liquids,
In textile cleaning, the parameters chemistry, mechanics, its application in washing drums is unfavorable as textiles
time and temperature are summarized traditionally under usually trap gas bubbles and produce foam during
the name Sinner’s Circle [1]. Chemistry is a customary term washing. Together with the fact that the textile surface
in the laundry business and is used to denote the action of shows only a small impedance change compared to water,
the ingredients of the detergent such as surfactants, en- this reduces the range, and thus efficiency, of ultrasonic.
zymes and bleach. Mechanics in a conventional washing Even in laboratory experiments outside the washing
process is the result of the mixing of the laundry during machine with no textiles in the path between transducer
the process. Ultrasonic can be regarded as a special form and textile [2, 3] only small effects could be observed;
of mechanical force. Time is the duration in which the these experiments also lacked direct comparison with
other parameters are working on the stains at a specific conventional washing efficiency. Other proposed modes
temperature. of action of ultrasonic in laundry cleaning are oscillating
microbubbles that lead to an enhanced local water flow
which can also help to remove stains [4]. No application of
ultrasonic for washing drums with a proven impact on
*Corresponding author: Tobias Kimmel, University of Applied cleaning effect is available in the market.
Sciences Niederrhein, FB09, Reinarzstr. 49, D-47805 Krefeld,
In the work of Gallego-Juarez et al. [5], a set-up for
Germany, E-mail: tobias.kimmel@hs-niederrhein.de
Christian Kunkel, Maryam Ait Sghir and Kevin Pauels, University of
cleaning flat textiles such as in textile processing was
Applied Sciences Niederrhein, Krefeld, Germany proposed. Fabric in a flat format was moved parallel to a
Arnd Kessler, Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, Düsseldorf, Germany flat ultrasonic emitter in a shallow bath. Cleaning
 T. Kimmel et al.: Effect of the pre-treatment of stains with ultrasound 169

performance was measured for three different types of soils was assessed by the CIELAB lightness L* according to DIN EN ISO
and compared to a short washing cycle in a washing ma- 11664-4 [6]. L* was measured with the reflection spectrophotometer
CM-2600d from Konica Minolta Inc. The value L* = 0 corresponded to
chine. It was stated that for one stain cotton soiled with
black and 100 to white. Higher values indicate a better cleaning effect
carbon black and olive oil (EMPA-101), ultrasonic had a with the colored stains being removed from the white textile substrate.
better cleaning performance than an unusually short
washing cycle at 25 °C. As no specific data of the washing 2.2 Experimental conditions in main experiments
process were given, it was not clear if the difference is of
practical relevance and if this is true for other types of The combination of experimental conditions in the main experiments
stains. is shown in Figure 1.
The performance was assessed as difference of L*-values of each
stain before pretreatment and after the washing process. If the
colored stains were cleaned, L* increased. Pretreatment with the US
2 Experimental devices was done at room temperature and was followed by a
washing cycle at 20 °C or 40 °C. Energy consumption of the handheld
The aim of the experiments was to see whether under favorable ultrasonic devices was between 3 and 9 W. The pretreatment was
conditions the ultrasonic (US) devices showed a cleaning effect of done in a shallow tub filled with 400 mL of a detergent solution with
practical relevance in household conditions. As a preliminary a concentration of 6 g/L at room temperature. As detergent, the liquid
experiment, the influence of detergent concentration was deter- Persil Universal gel from Henkel AG & Co. KGaA was used. It con-
mined. This was followed by the main experiments, which evaluated tained surfactants, builders, enzymes and more minor components,
the effect of the US devices. but no bleach. The stains were also immersed completely in the
liquid during the pretreatment with US.
For the washing cycles the program cotton with the option short in
2.1 Measurement of cleaning effect
a Miele Softtronic 1935 WTL was used at 20 °C or at 40 °C. In order to
control the experimental conditions program time, water inlet and
In order to measure washing performance, a set of 20 different stains temperature were recorded, as found in Table 2.
from the Center for Testmaterials B.V. (CFT) was used, Table 1. Six Under household conditions, the load usually contains high
stains were mainly sensitive to bleach, eight to enzymes and six to amounts of soil types such as body soil and dust which have an in-
mechanical action; the textile substrate was cotton. fluence on detergency, but are barely visible. In order to imitate this,
Some of the stains were mixed with additional pigments like soot soil mixtures are added in laboratory experiments to the clean load.
in order to make it easier to measure stain removal. The cleaning effect This is also recommended for detergent testing [7]. Sheets of SBL 2004
from wfk Testgewebe GmbH were used as soil ballast for this purpose.
One piece contained 8 g of soil. As clean ballast load 5 kg textiles were
Table : Stain set used for testing the cleaning performance. The
used which consisted of 70% cotton and 30% polyester.
stains on cotton are divided into three groups, which are predomi-
During US pretreatment each of the 20 stains was treated manually
nantly sensitive to particular properties of the detergent or washing
by moving the device evenly over the surface of the whole spot of
system.
(5 × 5) cm2 for 30 s. The overall time for pretreatment and handling for all
stains before washing was 15 min. The pretreatment sequence of the
Type Description Sensitive to
stains was reversed in consecutive experiments. As the pretreatment was
CFT CS- Black currant Bleach done in a detergent solution, it was difficult to distinguish between the
CFT CS- Blueberry juice effect of soaking and that of US application. Therefore, experiments
CFT CS- Coffee without US application were done; in this case the stains were soaked at
CFT CS- Grass room temperature in the detergent solution for 15 min without further
CFT CS- Red wine, not aged treatment and washed at 20 °C or 40 °C. In order to compare the results to
CFT CS- Tea the conventional washing process, experiments with stains without
CFT CS- Beef lard Enzyme pretreatment or soaking were also conducted at 20 °C and 40 °C.
CFT CS- Blood, aged
CFT CS- Butterfat with colorant 2.3 Handheld US-pretreatment devices
CFT CS- Chocolate drink
CFT CS- Chocolate ice cream
Three handheld devices were used. During the pretreatment proced-
CFT CS- Corn starch, colored
ure in a liquid detergent-containing solution, the transducers had
CFT CS- Full egg with pigment
direct contact to the textile. The shape of the contact surface is shown
CFT CS- Salad dressing/natural black
in Figure 2.
CFT CS- Lipstick, red Mechanics
The devices from Sharp and Vitun had rectangular flat trans-
CFT CS- Make up
ducers and were powered by a rechargeable battery. The Electrolux
CFT CS-S Mayonnaise/carbon black
device had a hemispherical form and was connected to the mains.
CFT C- Olive oil/soot
After some time of use, cavitation corrosion could be observed at the
CFT CS- Sebum/soot
transducer tips of Vitun and Sharp. For this reason, results were
CFT C- Soot/mineral oil
controlled against new devices which showed no obvious differences.
170 T. Kimmel et al.: Effect of the pre-treatment of stains with ultrasound

Figure 1: Sequence of experiments and

process variables. Either there was no
pretreatment (1), only soaking in detergent
solution (2) or pretreatment with an
ultrasonic device (3). Afterwards, the stains
were washed either at 20 °C (4) or 40 °C (5).

3 Results and discussion in a stainless-steel water bath (30 × 24 × 14.5) cm3 at a

scanning rate of 1 MHz with the device cavispector from
3.1 Influence of detergent concentration Köchel Verifications GmbH. The sensor was placed in a
distance of 2 cm from the transducer, which itself was
In preliminary experiments, the concentration of detergent immersed about 2 cm from the surface in the middle of the
was varied. Tests were carried out twice for each concen- bath.
tration. Pretreatment was done in a similar manner to the The frequency range for the ultrasonic devices is
main experiments; the washing cycle was done at 20 °C. As shown in Figure 4; the working frequency matched the
cleaning effect, the mean ΔL* of all 20 stains between the manufacturer’s specifications: Electrolux: 46 kHz, Sharp:
application of US and the experiment with only soaking 38 kHz, Vitun: 51 kHz. The base-line of Electrolux was lower
was calculated, shown in Figure 3. compared to the other devices. One reason may be the
The experiments without detergent using only deion- hemispherical transducer geometry, which could lead to a
ized water or with concentrated detergent showed only a more even distribution of the ultrasonic radiation.
low washing performance, surprisingly on the same level. The gross power consumption of the handheld device
The cleaning effect of two concentrations of diluted from Sharp was estimated by the battery capacity 900 mAh
detergent of 6 and 9 g/L in deionized water showed no and running time 30 min as 7–9 W, this leads to 29 W/cm2 at
difference statistically, but on a higher level. The low per- the transducer tip. The power of the flat transducer used in
formance of the deionized water was to be expected as no Gallego-Juarez et al. [5] was reported to be (0.6–1.2) W/cm2
surfactants were available to remove and solubilise the at 20 kHz. Therefore, a washing effect could be expected,
stains. Another reason could be that the surface tension of
water is higher compared to detergent solutions and this
can lead to a reduced cavitation. The undiluted detergent
had a high viscosity which reduces cavitation as well and
leads to a slower interaction of surfactants with the stains.
A diluted detergent solution of 6 g/L was used in the pre-
treatment procedures in the main experiments.

3.2 Properties of ultrasonic devices

The ultrasonic devices are characterized by the working

frequency, as seen in Figure 4. The frequency was measured

Table : Recorded experimental conditions: time, water, energy,

and temperature.

Washing Time/min Water/L Energy/kWh Temperature/°C

program

Cotton, short   ±  . ± . . ± .

 °C
Cotton, short   ±  . ± . . ± .
 °C
Figure 2: Transducer shape of the handheld US pretreatment
The values include the standard deviation. devices from Electrolux, Sharp and Vitun.
T. Kimmel et al.: Effect of the pre-treatment of stains with ultrasound 171

Figure 3: Effect of detergent concentration on

lightness after US pretreatment and a
following washing cycle at 20 °C compared
to no pretreatment and washing. 0 g/L
corresponds to deionized water,
“concentrated” corresponds to undiluted
detergent. Error bars are min- and max-
values. Letters a, b and c: Significance
levels according to Tukey at 95% level.

Figure 4: Frequency range of different

ultrasonic devices for the devices from (a)
Electrolux, (b) Sharp and (c) Vitun.
172 T. Kimmel et al.: Effect of the pre-treatment of stains with ultrasound

Figure 5: Mean difference of L* values of the

combination of US pretreatment with a
following washing cycle compared to soaking
and washing: (a) following washing cycle
20 °C, (b) following washing cycle 40 °C. Error
bars show standard deviation.

even if the efficiency of the ultrasonic generators in the soaking without US when followed by washing cycle at
handheld devices was low. 20 °C only for the Sharp device.
For a first overview, Figure 5 shows the mean improve-
ment of all 20 stains after pretreatment and a following
3.3 Cleaning results washing cycle at 20 °C and 40 °C. In the following graphs,
only the difference ΔL* between the pretreatment US and
To decide whether the the US pretreatment showed a soaking are discussed as an effect. Higher ΔL* values show a
significant effect, the cleaning performance was compared better cleaning performance as can be seen in Figure 5.
to soaking without US and tests without pretreatment. Only The performance of the devices from Sharp and Vitun
if the US treatment was significantly better in both cases is at a higher level compared to that of the Electrolux
with one device, the US treatment with that specific device device, which showed the lowest performance in all tests.
was regarded as being overall better for this kind of stain. This may be because the transducer of Electrolux has a
Most stains show an overall better cleaning with US smaller contact surface; this can lead to an uneven effect
pretreatment regardless of whether the following washing during the manual pretreatment.
cycle was at 20 or at 40 °C. Only the stains butter fat, black The results for Sharp device are divided into stain
currant and beef lard partly showed no significant effects. groups to see which stains are weaker or more affected by
All stains were overall better removed with US compared to US. As an example, the results at 20 °C are shown in Figure 6.
 T. Kimmel et al.: Effect of the pre-treatment of stains with ultrasound 173

Figure 6: Mean difference between US

pretreatment with the Sharp device versus
soaking for different stain groups sensitive to
bleach, enzymes or mechanical action. After
pretreatment and after soaking, the stains
were washed at 20 °C. Error bars show
standard deviation.

Figure 7: Effect of US pretreatment versus soaking on individual stains from different stain groups, stains were sensitive to (a) bleach, (b)
enzymes, (c) mechanic.
174 T. Kimmel et al.: Effect of the pre-treatment of stains with ultrasound

Figure 8: Comparison of the cleaning effect

of 20 °C and 40 °C washing cycles without
pretreatment (20 °C, 40 °C) and the
combination of an ultrasonic pretreatment
and a 20 °C washing cycle (20 °C + US). ΔL*
refers to the stain before any treatment.
Mean values for the stain groups that are
sensitive to bleach, enzymes or mechanical
action. Error bars show standard deviation.

Stains sensitive to mechanics showed the highest at 20 °C has a better cleaning effect compared to a 40 °C
cleaning effect of US. The detergent contained no bleach washing process without pretreatment.
but enzymes. As enzymes should also be active in the Stains containing particulate pigments like soot
soaking pretreatment, only minor effects on stains, which are removed more efficiently by ultrasonic pretreatment.
were optimized to show the effect of bleach or enzymes, Whether only the pigments in the stain mixtures were
were expected. Nevertheless, stains from the bleach and removed selectively or whether the mixtures were evenly
enzymes sensitive group also showed a significantly removed could not be decided, as only the lightness was
enhanced lightness in the runs with US pretreatment measured which reacts strongly to pigments like soot.
compared to soaking. However, as also nearly all stains without pigments
The performance on different stains from each group is showed an overall cleaning effect, it is likely that US
shown in Figure 7. In the group of stains which react to pretreatment removes a broad variety of stain materials.
mechanics, stains containing pigments like soot are better As cavitation can even corrode metallic surfaces,
removed compared to stains with lipstick without addi- fiber damage is also a relevant topic. In the experiments, no
tionally added pigments. This is in accordance to Junhee changes of the textiles could be observed visually after one
et al. [2] who calculated that carbon black in stains can be run. Additionally, the friction between transducer and the
removed by ultrasonic cavitation as well as by oscillating textile will have an impact on fiber damage. However, in the
bubbles. As most stains showed an overall effect of ultra- case of randomly distributed stains in textiles, there is little
sonic pretreatment, the scope of application of ultrasonic chance that one and the same textile area will be treated
pretreatment seems to be very broad. several times with an US device. For heavily soiled cloth,
Comparison of a US pretreatment followed by a washing pretreatment will be too time-consuming and therefore a
cycle at 20 °C and a washing cycle at 40 °C without pre- washing program should be chosen without pretreatment.
treatment shows that the effect of the US is of practical But for working clothes with typical stain patterns or for a
relevance, Figure 8. In this case ΔL* is the difference after the broad application of this technology, the impact of fiber
treatment and compared to the stain before any treatment. damage should be estimated.
The mean effect of all three stain groups was ΔL* = 19.5 During the experiments, a temperature increase of the
for a US pretreatment with washing at 20 °C, but only US transducer was observed which could also lead to an
ΔL* = 15.3 if the stains were not pretreated at all and enhanced cleaning performance. In order to evaluate the
washed at 40 °C. isolated effect of US, the influence of temperature and
friction on the cleaning effect should be addressed spe-
cifically in future experiments.
4 Conclusions
It was shown that a 30 s pretreatment with a US device in a Acknowledgement: We would like to thank the staff mem-
detergent-containing solution followed by a washing cycle bers of the laboratory at Henkel for their help and ideas.
 T. Kimmel et al.: Effect of the pre-treatment of stains with ultrasound 175

Research funding: We would like to thank Henkel AG & Co. https://www.aise.eu/our-activities/standards-and-industry-

KGaA for funding this work. guidelines/laundry-detergent-testing-guidelines.aspx (accessed
Apr 3, 2021).
Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare no
conflicts of interest regarding this article.

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