Laundering Factors in Soil Removal

Assessing soil removal is of interest to the washing machine industry because of government-mandated energy savings and changes in detergent formulation and consumer laundry practices. We designed this study to examine the laundry process from a holistic perspective by integrating factors perceived to be of importance. Our purpose was to assess the impact of selected variables (fabric and soil type, wash temperature and time. detergent amount, and degree of agitation) on soil removal using accelerated laundry conditions. We used the Taguchi method to develop the research design and ANOVA to analyze the data. Although soil removal was affected by fabric type, soil type, type and amount of detergent, degree of agitation, wash time and temperature, and water hardness and volume, wash temperature was the most significant variable.