Abstract

The currentent standard procedure for testing the performance of automatic household dishwashers (EN 50242/EN 60436:2008) does not represent real-life conditions, either in the composition of the load or in the composition of the soiling. The on-going revision of the standard includes modifications of the load (addition of more consumer-relevant materials and forms) and soiling. But with regard to consumer oriented performance testing, even the revised version does not display the average real-life conditions. Therefore, a consumer-oriented load and soiling was developed containing inter alia forms and materials soiled with consumer-like food, oriented on consumer behaviour of four European countries. First performance tests in two automatic household dishwashers show the differentiability. The topic was orally presented at the 46th International Detergency Conference, April 10th 2013 and published in the corresponding proceedings.

INTRODUCTION

Detecting energy saving potentials of household appliances became a popular field of research in recent time. The use of energy consuming but helpful appliances in private households grows forth: The market saturation for electric household dishwashers in Germany was 67 % in 2010 (1).
To quantify energy saving potentials in private households with scientific laboratory tests, test conditions need to be as close to average real life conditions as possible. For performance testing in automatic household dishwashers, the task is to find a test load and soiling that display average consumer habits and are proven to be at least sufficiently repeatable in laboratory performance testing.
The Energy Label for electric household dishwashers claims to display the consumer-relevant performance- and consumption- characteristics of a certain dishwasher model. The underlying test method for measuring those performance and consumption values is the current standard EN 50242/EN 60436:2008, “Electric dishwashers for household use - Methods for measuring the performance” (2). It seems to be a natural choice to run consumer-like performan ...