Field Testing of Conventional and High-Velocity Electric Hand Dryers
Project Number ET 02.08 Organization SCE End-use Other Sector Other Project Year(s) 2005 - N/AProject Summary
This study provides an energy savings comparison of five different types of hand dryers: standard manual, energy efficient manual, standard automatic, energy efficient automatic and high velocity automatic. A standard automatic hand dryer and a high velocity hand dryer were installed in the men\\\'s and women\\\'s rooms, respectively, at the Customer Technology Application Center\\\'s main conference facility in Irwindale, California. Monitoring equipment was installed in these systems to track the average drying cycle. Through this study, it was determined that individuals typically spent 17 seconds drying their hands with the standard automatic unit and 14 seconds using the high velocity unit. This means that a full 13 to 26 seconds of energy consumed by a standard manual unit is wasted due to the unit\\\'s fixed 30 to 40-second drying cycle. To determine energy savings, an energy use profile was developed with data from two standard manual hand dryers located at a Taco Bell restaurant. One year\\\'s worth of monitoring data, captured at 15-minute intervals was segmented based on time of use and season, to determine true energy costs.