Short and sweet: balancing energy savings and cleaning performance to identify efficient short-cycles for domestic dishwashers

Optimizing the energy efficiency of household appliances is crucial to appliance manufacturers, energy suppliers, governments and, almost importantly, consumers. For the reliable cleaning of normally soiled dishes, consumers can save energy by using Eco-programs instead of Intensive- or Auto-programs, but this means that they have to accept cleaning times of up to 4 h. Consequently, the acceptance for these programs is not very high, despite consumers’ high willingness to save energy and water. Short-cycles that run for less than 55 min and use equal to less energy on average than Eco-programs have a high consumer potential. However, according to manufacturers, these are rather designed for lightly soiled or pre-treated dishes. Considering the Sinner’s circle, the cleaning result depends on the interaction of temperature, time, mechanics and chemistry, so we investigated the extent to which using a commercially available detergent, thus fully exploiting the “chemistry” component of the Sinner’s circle, can save time, temperature, water and, most importantly, energy in the end. Our results show that there are Short-program combinations using a commercially available detergent that reliably clean normally soiled dishes in less than 55 min and typically 30–40 min with significantly lower energy consumption than average Eco-cycles.