Hand dryer

Hand dryers are electric devices found in public washrooms that are used to dry hands. They may either operate with a button or automatically using an infrared sensor.

Costs

Hand dryers have been popular with industries for their apparent economies. According to manufacturers, hand dryers can cut costs by as much as 99.5% (for example a company may spend $2340.00 per year on paper towels, where as the hand dryer expenditure would be as low as $14.00 per year - this will vary according to the cost of paper towels and electricity). They require very little maintenance compared to paper towels, which must be replaced. An added benefit is the removal of the paper waste. Hand dryers represent a larger initial investment, so those responsible for facility management must do a careful cost analysis to determine whether they are cost effective in their building. Costs are always relative to the KW/h cost that the facility is charged by its provider. In the UK, this will typically be around 10-12p, the only way to compare costs accurately is to work out the rated energy consumption and divide it by the number of drys the hand dryer is capable of performing back to back in 1 hour, this will give the energy consumption per dry. The world's lowest energy hand dryer uses just 1 watt-hour per dry and is rated at 0.24 kW.