why can’t clothes dryer send the static to ground?

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Lots of static electricity is created when drying your clothes. Why can’t the dryer send the static to ground?

In: Engineering

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It does. It sends almost all of the static electricity to ground. The thing is that clothes are made of electrical insulators: nylon, rayon, polyester, vicose and the like, so there is always electric charges that do not connect to the ground to be dissipated.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because static electricity is a connection from some charges to other charges. If one ‘charges’ are in ground, then a static electric discharge still exists from charges in clothes to charges now in ground.

Static is eliminated when both charges are somehow connected. One of many techniques is an ion generator. Then no current (a static discharge) happens because those charges are already discharged.

Anonymous 0 Comments

If an ion emitter is placed in the inlet air stream it releases positive and negative ions (oscillates, some of them neutralize eachother, but most make it to the clothes), they neutralize the static build up wherever it is occurring on the materials. It is a very low cost bit of electronics – used widely in the manufacturing of sensitive electronics to prevent damage during handling. It decreases dry time by allowing for more free movement of the garments. I don’t know of any production dryers currently utilizing this technical solution.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It does. The problem is that clothes don’t give up their static easily. The dryer has to touch the part of the clothes where the static builds up in order to discharge it. Touching every square inch of shirt is difficult.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The problem is that clothes don’t conduct electricity. If something conductive, like a piece of metal, gets charged up you simply need to connect it to ground at one point. But when something which doesn’t conduct electricity gets charged up, connecting one point to ground only discharges that point. Then the only solutions are increasing conductivity via putting something on it or high humidity, or connecting ever spot on the thing to ground.