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For starters, it’s not that dry. The big difference between dry cleaning and normal washing is that, instead of water, the clothes are treated with a chemical solvent – which is still a liquid. “Water swells the fiber of fabrics. When clothes dry, they can shrink and become deformed. With the solvent this does not happen: that is its great advantage”, says the engineer Nelcindo Nascimento, president in Brazil of an international network of laundries. The process, like so many other inventions, was discovered by chance. In 1855, the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Jolly would have accidentally knocked over a kerosene lamp on a table and noticed that the tablecloth that covered it had become cleaner. From then on, he developed a method of using the product and ended up opening the first dry cleaning house. The problem is that the initial solvents, derived from petroleum, were highly flammable and every now and then a fire broke out.
It was only in the 1950s that the process became popular, thanks to new machines and, mainly, to the use of perchlorethylene, a solvent also called perc which – although toxic to humans – was cheap, did not catch fire, evaporated quickly and it cleaned better than previous substances. Today, perc is used by virtually all professional laundries.
Parts ready in an hour
1 – Dirty laundry is first inspected for stubborn stains. For each type of stain – such as blood, grease or sauces – there is a specific chemical. An employee applies the substance manually with a tube and removes the stain with the help of small compressed air guns and steam
2 – In an automatic machine, the clothes are immersed in the solvent (perc), washed and centrifuged. As perc evaporates very easily, there is no need to hang out the clothes: a hot air system is activated inside the machine, which only switches off when the clothes are completely dry.
3 – After leaving the machine, the clothes are inspected again. If stains remain, it goes back to step 1, pre-treatment. There are, however, some stains – such as those caused by dye discoloration – that cannot be removed
4 – Approved garments are ironed with a hot steam iron. But this steam, under pressure, quickly crosses the fabric and is sucked by a special ironing board, which prevents the pieces from getting wet.
5 – With the clothes clean and ironed, just fold them and pack them in a machine equipped with a plastic coil, which packs everything quickly. Between the arrival of the clothes and delivery to the customer, the whole process takes just one hour.