Modeling industrial scale washing machine process using artificial neural networks

Abstract The paper presents a dynamic model of a typical industrial washing machine fed with hot water, cold water and steam. Since industrial scale washing machines are not expressly designed to be energy efficient, there is scope to reduce energy consumption and wastewater discharge through dynamic model analysis of washing programs and washing machine units as regards heating medium parameters and prices. The paper presents a construction of the dynamic model using Aspen Hysys software that provides data to determine optimized parameters of water and steam delivered to the washing unit. The model has been validated with real data delivered by the dedicated measuring software from the washing machine manufacturer. Finally, the paper presents an economic analysis and sensitivity analysis regarding energy prices with various media parameters. Results show that the price of the washing process can be reduced by 64% depending on the parameters of the heating medium.