Any idea of the optimum temperature for moisture adsorbtion using silica gel? I'd like to dry out some delicate stuff ( a camera) and I'm guessing a moderate temperature increase will drive the moisture off more quickly but it's no use if the silica gel I'm packing around it fails to take it up.
AFAIK room temp will suffice. Although a slightly higher drier heat will allow better evap'
the hotter the faster
NT
That's what I was thinking but I didn't want to get into the zone where it ceases adsorbing and starts releasing. I'm unlikely to want to take the camera above 50deg C.
I've got a few packs dried out ready to start tonight.
fred wrote
(at the risk of being flamed for not paying attention, but I haven't spotted the other thread, and my newsfeed has been quite erratic for a couple of days so tracking stuff has been not so easy ...)
How does one go about drying the packs?
Put it in a warm oven for about half an hour
Sam Farrell wrote
Oh! Easy-peasy. Thanks.
If you go that high you wont need the gel in the first place, the heat alone will boil the water away. Youre limited in practice by what the camera is ok with.
NT
In article , Roger Hunt writes
Lots of old threads on google groups:
C'mon, that's the easy bit to find ;-). In theory you can go up to hundreds of degrees for proper non-indicating Silica Gel but the pack material will burst into flames. Indicating (colour change on adsorbtion) should be dried at
120 to 150 deg C to avoid damaging the indicator. Mine is good quality non-indicating stuff and I dried it at 130 deg C in a fan oven for a few hours but was disappointed to find the packs discolouring (to brown) so I would recommend keeping the temp a bit lower, perhaps 120 or less.What is more difficult to find is the temp at which they stop adsorbing and start drying themselves. This would let you dry stuff at an optimum temperature but I have yet to find this level of detail.
In the end I've given up on the Silica Gel route and am drying the camera by blowing warm filtered air into the open orifices.
See my other post, I am going the warm air route but it would be nice to know that knee point at which the adsorbtion starts to drop off for future reference.
Somehow water vapour has managed to condense between the LCD and its backlight, a total ball-ache.
fred wrote
I'm just about to look, if the electricity supply lets me. There have been six brown-outs in the last twenty minutes and each time the bloody system switches itself off just as I'm finishing this message. It's infuriating!
Best of luck with that. (I recently purchased at auction a rather grubby Pentax MX, but after Hoovering out the sawdust(!) and cleaning the muck off (birdshit?), it seems in very good nick.)
In article , Roger Hunt writes
No flame intended or deserved.
Ah, presumably you're in the sticks, although I've never had need of one perhaps you could do with a UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply), alternatively a loan of a transient logger could persuade your leccy supplier to sort out your supply (a poor joint on an local overhead perhaps?).
Thanks, I'll give it a few days of drying unpowered but this is modern ultra compact digital muck and they just can't handle a bit of (minor) abuse, I'm not optimistic.
fred wrote
Forest of Dean, and I don't mind at all - I have wall sconces and candles and stoves and an open fire, so there is no suffering involved.
I was given a link to a most interesting flywheel powered ups, in uk.rec.sheds ....
Look on the bright side - as capitalist consumers it is our duty to chuck these things away immediately and support the economy by going into debt to buy another, better, camera. Repairing things harms the economy by reducing cash-flow, and done deliberately is nothing less than antisocial and even subversive.
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