Development of a Military Hardened Expeditionary, Energy Efficient and Waterless Laundry System

Deployable military laundry systems consume large amounts of water and energy.This burden can be measured in the cost of transportation and human capital.The ECBL, CBL, and LADS utilized by Force Provider, Army Medical, and Army Quartermaster Corps exhibit water-efficiency improvements over the M-85 system to varying degrees. Commercially, modest improvements in water and energy efficiency have been made in recent years, but at a sacrifice in their ability to clean and sanitize field laundry to acceptable levels. Expending additional efforts to further improve this type of equipment must therefore be questioned.This SBIR Phase I project seeks to make a quantum leap in water and energy reduction by developing a laundry system utilizing CO2 dry cleaning.This will include harnessing carbon dioxide (CO2) from sources available in theater, or if necessary generating CO2.Since both CO2 dry cleaning and CO2 recovery technologies are a known art, Guild Associates believes we have the understanding and experience to transition these technologies into deployable systems capable of meeting the climatic, transportability, and interoperability requirements needed to support the Force Provider, Medical Corps, and Quartermaster missions.