Hand Dryers From Mitsubishi, TOTO, and Dyson

Environmental Building News covered the first generation of high-speed hand dryers in 2002 with Excel Dryer’s 1500-watt XLerator model. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) calculations at that time showed that these units consume, per use, about a third of the energy of conventional 2,200-watt electric hand dryers and about one-sixth the energy of using recycled paper towels (see

EBN Jan. 2002). But the first version of the XLerator was loud, and the water that it didn’t vaporize ended up on the floor or surrounding surfaces.