Liquid C02 cleaning for sleeping bags/quilts

https://renewalworkshop.com/en/general/faq

No oil stripping detergent for my down, thanks.

But I guess that could be changed.

Maybe Renewal Workshop’s liquid CO2 process (from TERSUS Solutions) isn’t that bad for down garments. They sell some down-looking jackets, like this one:

https://renewalworkshop.com/en/RW103431-1087400052950101.html

though their web site is short on insulation details. As George said, would be nice to here from real customers.

Patagonia bought the first TERSUS liquid CO2 washing machine a couple of years ago for their Common Threads program. Patagonia also was one of TERSUS early investors.

http://www.tersussolutions.com/tersusblog/2015/3/4/first-commercial-system-ships

Too bad no chemical engineers hang out on BPL who could tell us more about cleaning with liquid CO2 :-)

— Rex

Guess we will never know.

Back in my pharma research days we experimented with supercritical CO2 extraction for use in cleaning residual monomers and oligomers from biodegradable polymers. CO2 in an excellent and inert solvent for cleaning stuff, but you have to get it to be a fluid to use it, which requires very high pressures. So if you scale it up, you’d need some VERY big, thick, heavy stainless steel components – expensive equipment. Coffee companies use something similar for decaffeinating coffee products, but I’m not familiar with that application.

Yeah, what Lester said.  Super-critical CO2 is a very effective solvent, second perhaps only to water in the range of things it will dissolve at a low temperature.

When all the chlorinated solvents were being discovered in the soil and water under dry cleaners, paint shops, plating operations and electronics manufacturers, there was a lot of interest in a cleaner alternative and liquid CO2 was an obvious choice between its solvent properties and that if you leak any, it just evaporates away.

But having to keep it above 1000 psi means that everything – the washing machine, the pipes, the filtering apparatus – have to built like a submarine.  Including the hatches through which you load and unload clothes.  And when pressure increase in volume (diameter), the wall thickness must too.  Hatches likewise have to be much stronger as you increase the size to something useable.

Then there is the energy required to compress the CO2 gas into a liquid and the refrigeration equipment to remove the heat of compression.

No wonder TCE and PCE were such popular solvents for so long.