Removal of Particles from Substrates by Electro-Osmotic Flow

The detergent process or detergency is defined as the removal of soil, or matter out of place, from a substrate immersed in a medium through the application of a mechanical force in the presence of a detergent which lowers the adhesion of the soil to the substrate¹⁾. Regarding the mechanical force in the detergent process for porous solids such as fabrics, detergency is considered to be governed by flow behavior of the washing medium inside the porous solids. For example, the fabric can be considered as a system of capillaries; the space between fibers is a capillary and the fiber surface is the capillary wall. In the washing process, soil particles adhering to the fiber surface can be detached by the tangential flow of washing liquid in the capillaries.