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Panoramic view on the North Campus © Jürgen Huhn​/​TU Dortmund
Sustainable and clean

Professor Natalie Germann simulates superheated steam dishwasher

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Portrait of a woman against a gray background. The woman is Prof. Natalie Germann. © Aliona Kardash​/​TU Dortmund
Natalie Germann is professor for fluid mechanics at the Department of Biochemical and Chemical Engineering of TU Dortmund University.
Will dishwashers in future no longer clean our dishes with water and detergents, but instead just with superheated steam? This is the question that Professor Natalie Germann, professor for fluid mechanics at the Department of Biochemical and Chemical Engineering of TU Dortmund University, is exploring. To this end, she has simulated a superheated steam dishwasher. The results sound highly promising: clean dishes, all bacteria killed off, fast cycle, low water and energy consumption. Professor Germann will present her findings to an international audience of experts at Americal Physical Society Conference of the Division of Fluid Dynamics (APS DFD) in Phoenix, USA, at the end of November.

By means of a simulation, Professor Natalie Germann from TU Dortmund University and Dr. Laila Abu-Farah from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have studied the potential of superheated steam. Firstly, it was a matter of understanding the physical processes: How powerful is the steam’s effect in the dishwasher? How far does it reach? How does it cool down, and how does it condense? Which bacteria are killed off? “Such a simulation is very complex and challenging,” says Professor Germann. As a basis for first of all simulating the turbulent flow of steam inside the appliance, the researchers used the freely available OpenFOAM software. This was combined with another software to simulate temperature and the accompanying condensation. The researchers also added a bacteria model to simulate the inactivation of bacteria on the surface of the dishes.

A graph showing the development of bacteria.
In 14 Sekunden werden die Bakterien auf dem Teller durch den heißen Dampf abgetötet.
Two graphs side by side with temperature and speed data.
The simulation shows the flow of steam (arrows) and the temperature in the superheated steam dishwasher. It is hotter near the sides and on the surface of the plate (red) than in the empty space (blue).

“The finished simulation shows the complex dynamics between flow, temperature, and bacterial inactivation in a simplified dishwasher geometry and confirms that the superheated steam does indeed clean reliably and in a short time,” says Professor Germann, summarizing the results. The findings will contribute, for example, to selecting the right arrangement of nozzles in a superheated steam dishwasher. The researchers plan to publish their results in the form of a manuscript in the international journal Physics of Fluids. In a next step, the aim is to couple the simulation with experiments to determine, among others, whether cleaning agents are still necessary at all in superheated steam dishwashers.

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