I was watching television one night, it was late so I usually watch infomercials just to make fun of them.
Anyway, I saw one for those steam cleaners. If you have never seen one, they look like portable vacuum cleaners, except they take stains off of walls, floors, furniture, basically everything only using steam. No soap, no chemicals, just a high powered jet of hot steam that more-or-less liqufies dirt and grease.
My question is, couldn’t we make a dishwasher that only used steam. Since dishwashers already use water, it wouldn’t cost more than modern dishwashers. You would not have to buy Cascade, or that Jet-Dry stuff. Is there any reason that this could not work?
What do you mean by “only use steam”? Are you talking about a dishwasher that uses extremely high temperatures to sterilize the dishes, like an autoclave? Or are you talking about a dishwasher that directs jets of steam instead of blasts of water to scrub the dishes clean?
If you’re talking about steam cleaning, the basic problem is to get a jet of anything to do the job of mechanical scrubbing. The infomercials don’t tell you that while the steam can do a nice job of softening up the stain, somehow, some way, someone is going to have to at least wipe it off. The dishwasher soap helps the process along.
So basically what you’re saying,kunilou , is that steam could not get the job done by itself.
If after the steaming, all the dishes got a quick spray of water and then allowed to drip, would that solve the problem.
I wouldn’t mind buying a steam cleaning outfit if they could only get one with enough power. I worked one summer in a college cafeteria as an odd jobs guy. Occasionally they would turn me loose on the pans with baked-on crud. Armed only with the steam wand (that I assume was linked to the building’s boiler) I could easily take anything off the pans that they could bake on. In this case the steam alone would get everything off but it (the steam) was coming out in a pretty good jet (I hate to think what would have happened if someone got their hand in the spray).
The cafeteria only used the steam cleaner only for the really rough stuff. I loaded the dishwasher more times than I would care to recall.
One big problem with the steam dishwasher idea is that it would limit the number of “dishwasher safe” containers that people would have on hand.
At work we have a steam cleaner wand that I’m pretty sure is attached to one of the boilers. Pure steam comes out at a high speed/pressure, and cleans just about anything off of industrial equipment and nasty factory parts. It’s usually good to rinse afterward, but, so much of the steam condenses on the parts, they’re almost self washing.
As for the quality of dishwashes, I couldn’t be more pleased than what we’ve got now! I how no idea how they get things cleaner without contact than I can get with the force of my hands. Tea stains, baked on crap, &ct.
I would think the considerations lie in cost and safety. It’s expensive to generate steam at the pressure and quantity you’d need. (Not super expensive, but enough to disqualify your dishwasher from any potential energy star programs.) And live steam is pretty dangerous stuff. (Don’t know if you’d need more than the steam cleaner you described, but anything with a steam boiler probably poses some substantial liability risks.)
Imagine cracking open the dishwasher and getting a facefull of pressurized steam… Hot water can get pumped into the drain, but steam would present a bit of a problem – you’d have to condense it first.
I’d also expect that the parts would be more expensive to manufacture – steam is pretty corrosive stuff.
Just so I know,Balthisar , you don’t mean “baked on crap” litterally do you?
Just kidding:D