Contemporary cleaning appliances, such as dishwashers or clothes washers, may be a common convenience in many homes. A user simply loads the cleaning appliance with laundry to be treated into a treating chamber, along with an optional supply of a treating chemistry, such as detergents, bleach, enzymes, and anti-spotting agents and selects and initiates a cleaning cycle that is subsequently automatically carried out by the cleaning appliance. An example of a typical cleaning cycle includes the washing of the laundry with liquid and optional treating chemistry and rinsing the laundry with liquid.
Cleaning appliances may be provided with a dispenser for automatically dispensing one or more treating chemistries during a cleaning cycle. One common type of dispenser is the manual or single use dispenser, which may be filled with only enough treating chemistry for a single cleaning cycle. A user must fill these manual dispensers with treating chemistry prior to each cleaning cycle of the cleaning appliance, which may be a tedious task that many users would prefer not to perform. In addition, users may not supply the correct dosage of the treating chemistries for the selected cleaning cycle, which may negatively impact the efficacy of the cleaning cycle.
While still relatively uncommon in household cleaning appliances as compared to the single use dispensing systems, bulk dispensing systems for household cleaning appliances may be one solution that improves the ease of supplying treating chemistry in the proper dosage to the cleaning appliance for the user. Bulk dispensing systems contain enough treating chemistry for multiple cycles and control the dispensing of the chemistry on a cycle-by-cycle basis. However, many users are unwilling to purchase a new machine just for a bulk dispensing system.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds