Or take a pair of wifes pantyhose.
A sock that's lost its friend maybe?
You want as much surface exposure you can get for best performance. IMO
Does Desiccant Wear Out?
- Thread starter jaytee
- Start date
A sock that's lost its friend maybe?
You want as much surface exposure you can get for best performance. IMO
In my experience it does become ineffective and need to be “recharged “.
In 1991 I was working as a diver on a saturation project on the Hondo Platform pipeline offshore California in 850’ of water. Six of us were in in the chamber and during blow down at around 700’ one of the environmental control units failed. We were still able to control co2 levels but the humidity was unmanageable. Instead of aborting which would have resulted in 7 days of decompression they called the beach and had a bunch of silica gel sent out on the next crew boat. We filled one of the co2 scrubber canisters with the silica gel which helped and also sprinkled it on the floor. This was a stopgap measure to keep working until the ECU was repaired. As the Selica gel drew the the moisture from the atmosphere I believe it turned a pinkish color so then we would send it out, and the deck crew would take it to the galley and dry it in the oven and send it back to us. It was a miserable dive but luckily relatively short, only 4 days of diving and 10 days decompression. As we got shallower during decompression the chamber humidity became more manageable. They never did get the broken ECU working to full capacity but with one good ECU and the silica we were able to complete the work on bottom. I think we ran the town of Santa Barbara out of silica during that job.
Marc Mittry
This stuff is great. There is another brand Amazon sells for about the same price/pound that comes with about 10 organza drawstring bags. Fill the bag with dry and throw it in whatever you want to dessicate. I keep a couple bags in each of the sealed tubs I keep the spools of filament in for my 3D printers along with a $4 hygrometer. Drops the humidity down to about 15% for months. When it turns green put the beads without the bag in the oven at 250 until it turns orange again. The bags are more effective than a can or jar as the mesh on the bags lets plenty of air in. The drawstrings make it easy to fill and empty and should last forever.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QRRHJV3/?tag=accuratescom-20
I think that, being a chloride, there's a real potential for off-gassing free chlorine... but I'm no chemist so I can't say for certain. I know from talking to others who've used off-the-shelf retail products around iron-bearing metals that they've seen evidence of its presence alone causing rust over time.
The liquid left behind as it absorbs humidity? That IS corrosive. It's a chlorine-bearing water solution akin to seawater in the effect it'll have on steels.
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