Rockpool, the waterless dishwasher

Three University of New South Wales students have developed the Rockpool, a waterless dishwasher, and it's such a success that it will be Australia's entry in the Electrolux Design Laboratory competition to be held in New York.  The dishwasher uses "supercritical carbon dioxide" to create a fluid that acts as a powerful grease-cutter and solvent without the use of any water.  The technology isn't brand-new—it's been used in industrial cleaning applications for years—but this is the first time the technology has been used for consumer purposes.  Hopefully, this means installations won't be dependent on nearby plumbing. But, carbon dioxide? Will using carbon dioxide leave dishes smelling lemony fresh or more like that bad-breath smell that fizzes up from soda?

[Via Core77]

[silne @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

Australia doesn't ratify the Kyoto treaty, so it's fair to say that lack of water from the continuing drought will overrule some accords that the country doesn't support or use.

[[THE] @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

Carbon Dioxide is not a greenhouse gas. Carbon Monoxide is. But don't try to explain that to Grey Davis and the rest of the California legislature. You are right Hank, California did pass very strict laws on CO2 in the name of fighting gloabl warming. But like most of the nonsense that comes out of Sacramento, doesn't do anything to achieve what they claim it does.

[scot mcphee @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

The American Insitute Of Physics begs to differ.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

And so you can see the many other references to CO2 being a greenhouse gas, here's the google search that lead me to that page.

http://www.google.com.au/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&q=carbon%20dioxide%20greenhouse

[tomtom @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

Co2 (carbon dioxide) is responsible for about 55% of the whole greenhouse effect. But it is also the stuff we breathe out, so it can't be all that bad? Most of the CO2 is produced when fuel (eg. gasoline) is burned / used on the automobile, for example. To use CO2 in the dishwasher - will that produce oxygen and hydrogen :)

[okay-yo @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

What is worse, is the question, all the detergent created and dumped into our water supply ('used to be a really big issue - it got into our rivers and lakes) or the CO2. C02 is metabolized by all green plants and micro-organisms (algae etc). I'm not suggesting that the detergent is worse, I believe it is but I don't really know.

[Joseph @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

I know it's unfashionable to add reason to this kind of debate, but you are all missing a couple of critical points, the most critical is that this device USES CO2, it does not CREATE CO2. This device has nothing to do with existing or proposed environmental regulation of CO2. The use of supercritical (fancy way of saying extremely high pressure) CO2 in industrial cleaning came about because
1) CO2 is easily pulled from the atmosphere for industrial applications (hence no creation of CO2)
2) CO2 is easily purchased in cannisters for smaller operations (also pulled from the atmosphere, so no creation of CO2)
3) CO2 does not cause cancer, birth defects, ozone depletion, etc... (existing solvents it replaces, like PERC, most definitely do)
4) CO2 detergents (detergents are still required) are generally less damaging to the environment, and are often used in smaller quantities, than the detergents used even in most other industrial cleaning operations.
5) CO2 is less damaging to many electronic devices than the alternatives.

There are other advantages, but these are the more commonly cited ones.

[Dan @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

I recently saw an article on TV about the 'Rockpool' unit.
It recycles the carbon dioxide that it uses and repressurises it. The waste and grime is collected from the unit and discarded. So they have really thought about the whole CO2 thing.

[The Matt @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

Man, in Analytical Chem I couldn't get our supercritical FC to work for anything. Heck, I couldn't even get an atomic spec to work, but that supercritical...it hated me.

Now the question is, how long until some internet nutjob tries to see if he can decaffeinate his coffee in this thing.

[Hank Fenster @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

More importantly, carbon dioxide is a "greenhouse gas," of sufficient threat that the state of California has chosen to saddle its citizens with huge increases in future vehicle costs just to eradicate a miniscule fraction of it that comes from automobile exhaust. Now we're supposed to wash loads of dishes with it, presumably releasing the spent gas into the atmosphere? Either the Worker's Paradise of California is wrong on this issue or these dishwasher developers are eco-terrorists.

[Joe @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

Carbon MONoxide

[Hank Fenster @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

No, carbon *DI*oxide (among other things) is what California's most recent vehicle emission legislation was intended to address. Try to import one of these CO2 dishwashers into the state and I bet you'd be beaten to death with copies of the Kyoto treaty.

[Sean @ Dec 19th 2005 2:10AM]

When is Sacramento going to put limits on how many times their state's citizens can exhale in a day?