Modelling Dishwashers’ Resource Consumption in Domestic Usage in European Households and its Relationship to a Reference Dishwasher

Abstract

Abstract The 'Recommendations for the Quality Assessment of the Cleaning Performance of Dishwasher Detergents" provide detailed procedures to assess the performance of a household dishwasher detergent using a standard test programme of a standard dishwasher. As such, they are a de facto standard for a whole industry. Consequently, it is relevant to ensure that the conditions under which the tests are carried out represent the relevant market: the automatic dishwashing machines installed and used in households in Europe. But no data are available by now describing the situation in the households. The task here is to model the distribution of total energy, water consumption and programme duration of the automatic dishwashing machines installed and used in private households in Europe when used by the consumer. Those data are then compared to the data of the reference dishwasher and, thus, the relevance of the reference system to the dishwashers installed in private households is assessed.