Vacuum 'Boil Off' Hand Dryer

To bolster its environmental kudos (and pressumably to reduce costs), the organisation at which I work has recently replaced one of the two paper towel dispensers in each washroom with a snazzy, electric, wall-mounted hand dryer. They did a short trial with three different vendors' products in a couple of washrooms before rolling out the winner, a slick, stainless Dyson slimline model, to the rest of the building.

Now these dryers work well enough, but they're not as effective as the paper towels they replace as they take longer and require one to contort one's hands and wiggle them about to get sufficient coverage. Plus they are incredibly noisy to the point where I feel people are inhibited in using them. Not to mention the occasional scares from the press and from the office grapevine that, by drawing air from the washroom, these devices are spraying fine faecal matter onto the hands of those using them, effectively undoing the prior hand washing efforts.

So, naturally, I was pondering how these devices could be improved, and then my elementary science knowledge kicked in and blessed me with a eureka moment: what if rather than blowing the water from my hands it could be boiled off instead. Would that not be a more triumphant way to dispose of the excess moisture from one's digits than the glorified fans that these hipster design bureaus are peddling?

A quick visit to Google Images later and I had the chart I needed, plotting the boiling point of water against pressure. Obviously one would not want one's hands to be boiled dry at 100°C, for that could cause some discomfort, so our newfangled hand dryer would have to lower the pressure somewhat, for, as we all know, the boiling point of water descends as does the pressure. From my chart I could see that the pressure would need to be fairly low before we would get into the realm of tolerable temperatures, so the dryer would need to create something close to a vacuum.

So I envisage a container mounted upon the wall, a lot like a conventional, electric dryer, with two holes upon the front through which one would insert each hand. A silicone rubber sphincter would then tighten about the wrists to create a near air- tight seal. A couple of small jet engines would then spring to life, pumping the air from the chamber to lower the internal pressure based upon the ambient temperature, such that the moisture upon the hands would reach boiling point. This would mean that on warmer days it would be possible to create a marginally lesser vacuum.

The user of the device would then wait a few seconds whilst the water gently boiled off of their hands, the sphincters would then almost certainly release their grip from around the user's cuffs and they would be free to walk happily from the washroom with bone-dry hands and only minor bleeding from the fingertips.

(If the jets prove to be too noisy then the chamber could be built to expand, like a syringe, by pneumatic jack thus lowering the pressure by increasing the chamber volume.)