Full Description

Commercial water use in the United States is growing. Demand management programs for water now reach beyond residential water use into the business sector. Food services establishments are one of the most numerous kinds of businesses. As Figure 1 shows, much of their water use is applied to dishwashing and icemaking. In addition to hotels and restaurants, ice machines are used in hospitals, medical offices, office buildings, government facilities, military bases, schools, construction bases, colleges, and convenience stores. This paper reviews evaluations by the California Department of Water Resources (Cal DWR) for two kinds of appliances: ice making machines with particular emphasis on ice cube machines; and conventional dishwashing machines used in food service establishments. For each of these types of machines, this paper describes: the basic kinds of machines in popular use; how they operate; how efficiently the machines use water; and the potential for water savings. The authors indicate that there is a wide range of water use between machines of different manufacturers and even different models by the same manufacturer. Air cooled ice cube machines are far less wasteful than water cooled ice machines using single pass cooling. Even so, there is substantial room for air cooled machines to improve water efficiency. Ice cube machines purify water to make ice, but discharge much water to waste. With current ice cube machine technology, a tradeoff exists between ice quality and water efficiency. The authors estimated water savings for both ice cube makers and dishwashers.

Product Details

Published: 01/01/1995 ISBN(s): 0898678315 Number of Pages: 25File Size: 1 file , 880 KB