Patent ID: 8166670

Claim:
A clothes drying apparatus, comprising: a) a clothes dryer having a frame that supports a drying chamber having an interior for containing clothes to be dried and an exhaust duct for discharging heated air from the chamber; b) a lint filtration housing mounted on the frame, the filtration housing having a two part interior including an inner part that contains a filter for removing lint from a dryer exhaust air flow stream and an outer part that is separated from the inner part with a baffle wall; c) the housing having an influent fitting for transmitting heated exhaust air from the drying chamber to the housing interior inner part; d) an ambient air supply that enables ambient air to be added to the filtration housing interior outer part; e) the outer part having one or more vanes that create an annular vortex within the filtration housing interior; and f) a flow line that transmits preheated air from the filtration housing interior inner part to the dryer interior; and q) wherein heat transfer from the inner part to the ambient air in the outer part is via the baffle wall which is heated by the exhaust air in the inner part.