Dry The Hands Please

Merry Xmas~

Happy holiday to everyone. Still busy buying presents and gifts for your loved ones? Or enjoying the company of your closest friend, doing things together like shopping, jogging or even on a vacation? Either way, you all deserve it after a long busy work throughout the year. It's the season of giving and sharing and I believe that it should be celebrated.

So I have gone to Singapore where all the decorations and Christmas sales are on frenzy. During my buying spree in one of the nice shopping malls, I have noticed that their hand dryer is magnificent. The design matches with the landscape but it kept me thinking, is it an energy efficient product? When I try to check on the labels for any energy star rating, I was asked by one of the staff to leave it alone. Hmm...this event had motivated me to find out more on energy efficient hand dryer.

How Does It Work?

The basic utility of a hand dryer is to dry hands using an electric source. Hand hygiene is a very important aspect in preventing spread of communicable diseases.

Electricity consumption for regular hand dryers is around 2200 watts, and for energy-saving devices it is around 1600 watts. Earlier, these devices were switched on using a button. When the button was pressed, the device started blowing warm air for drying hands. But new-age hand dryers have infrared motion sensors installed in them. The device detects motion and automatically turns on when hands are placed for drying. Similarly, it automatically turns off when hands are moved away from the dryer, thereby preventing wastage of electricity.

Warm air is produced by a hand dryer using a heating coil made up of Nichrome, a hybrid of chromium and nickel. When air, having a temperature as that of the surrounding environment, is passed through the heating element, it gets warm. The heating coil is usually heated 50 degrees higher than the existing room temperature. The warm air is then blown out of the device through a tube or a vent facing downwards. Hands are placed in the path of warm air coming out of hand dryer for drying.The warmth and pressure of air coming out of the dryer is sufficient to evaporate water from wet hands. First, the air pressure blows off water droplets from the hands and then the warmth dries out the moisture from the hands. Traditional hand dryers need around 45 seconds to dry hands, whereas new-age dryers take around 15 seconds to do this task.

There has always been a debate about the level of hygiene maintained by hand dryers. The cause of concern was that these devices circulate same air again and again, thereby making no difference in terms of hygiene. This was definitely true in case of hand dryers used in earlier times, but with new innovations coming up, manufacturers have tackled this issue by making use of High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters in their devices. These filters are 99.97% efficient in removing particles of 0.3 microns in size or smaller, from air used for drying hands. Thus, the amount of disease-causing germs in air blown out of the dryer is substantially reduced. Some manufacturers have even made it possible for air to be released at a speed of 400 mph which helps in sterilizing it before being released in the atmosphere.

Energy Savings

Usually we ask ourselves the same question before buying hand dryers for our facilities: Which is the best hand dryer in the market? The answer to this question still depends a little on what the needs of your facilities are.  There are a number of "best" hand dryers for each type of need and location. Is it a high speed hand dryer you are looking for or is an energy efficient hand dryer the key?  Do you need a hand dryer that improves the hand hygiene aspects of your washroom or do you need a quiet hand dryer that doesn't create loud noise in a sensitive area?

If you are more concerned about Energy efficiency then there are now lots of very low consumption products on the market with fast dry times and sub 1kw rated power. Some have realistic sub 15 second dry times using just 500 watts of rated power. The others remains very fast drying at an ambient 700 watt setting. There are few which realistically use between 4.4 and 6 watts per dry.

Factors to Consider

Hand dryers have been subject to much scaremongering from the paper towel industry about their hygiene, largely based on misleading test protocols. If hygiene is your main concern then there is only one product which incorporates a new cold plasma generator. The generator creates a charge which splits moisture to create Hydroxl radicals, which in turn break down the structure of bacteria and viruses. The product has been tested successfully on damp vitro skin on MRSA, E-coli, c-diff and salmonella and offers a complete unique benefit, not offered by any other hand drying method.

If noise is your main concern but you still want an effective dryer, then again there's a versatile solution that allows the motor to be finely modified to suit the requirements of the location and heat added where required. There are quieter hand dryers still however no one has yet produced a product that can be run at maximum dry speed which is also very quiet, so some compromise on performance is inevitably needed.

Other factors such as vandal resistance, motor life and looks also come into the decision making process and the industry has made great strides, but it is clear there is still room for one dryer that truly blows away the rest in every way!

In summary, restrooms need to provide some type of hand drying solution and the only two options are hand dryers or paper towels. Each restroom audience is unique and each may require a different solution. But from my opinion, I'll still go with hand dryer (and the most energy efficient one) because it doesn't pollute our planet with used paper towels.