Silica Packs Lifetime?

[halitime]

How long are silica packs effective?

[Wilt]

Until they are full of moisture. Then you revive them by putting them in an oven to drive off the moisture.

[Mark1]

Its true! It is not time based, it is moisture based. Seal them in something, they are good forever. Leave them in your pocket and run them through the laundry and they are done. The time part totally depends on how much moisture they touch. Florida humidity.... not very long. Nevada desert... considerably longer.

[ben_r_]

Check out the Pelican one. I have had it for a couple years and loved it.

[tvphotog]

http://www.silicagelpackets.com/

[halitime]

Thanks

[ben_r_]

http://www.silicagelpackets.com/
Ha ha! That silver/chrome one on the front image of that website is the one that Pelican rebrands.

[zoom_zoom]

How does one tell when the silica pack is no longer working?

[Bob_A]

The amount of water that silica gel can adsorb depends on the relative humidity of it's surroundings. About the only way you can tell if it needs regeneration is if you use an indicating type that turns color when fully loaded with water. Otherwise, if you depend on the stuff I'd probably regenerate it every week or so and chuck it after a few years.

Also, as far as life expectancy of the product I imagine that it's life is similar to other adsorbents which is about 500 regeneration cycles.

In the website already referenced here's a link to a type of indicating silica gel product. You can't put this stuff in an oven to regenerate it though since the packaging is made out of plastic:

http://www.silicagelpackets.com/indicating-silica-gel-packets//

[SkipD]

Nobody has said it here, but this is important to realize. Dessicant packs like silica gel are absolutely useless if they are not inside an airtight container.

Merely tossing dessicant packs into a conventional camera case, for example, will do absolutely nothing to the average moisture level in the camera case. The reason is that while the dessicant packs do absorb moisture, the moisture in the air around the camera case will replace the moisture absorbed about as fast as the absorption takes place.

Use the dessicant packs in an airtight container such as a Pelican case or even a sealed zip-lock bag, and you'll remove moisture from whatever is in the container. Using dessicant packs in a container that is not airtight, though, is a useless effort.

[Bob_A]

Nobody has said it here, but this is important to realize. Dessicant packs like silica gel are absolutely useless if they are not inside an airtight container.

Merely tossing dessicant packs into a conventional camera case, for example, will do absolutely nothing to the average moisture level in the camera case. The reason is that while the dessicant packs do absorb moisture, the moisture in the air around the camera case will replace the moisture absorbed about as fast as the absorption takes place.

Use the dessicant packs in an airtight container such as a Pelican case or even a sealed zip-lock bag, and you'll remove moisture from whatever is in the container. Using dessicant packs in a container that is not airtight, though, is a useless effort.

Correct. They'll just keep adsorbing water from the surroundings until they're full.

[dpark]

Nobody has said it here, but this is important to realize. Dessicant packs like silica gel are absolutely useless if they are not inside an airtight container.
That makes a lot of sense, but now I feel stupid for putting a bunch of silica packets in my bag . . . .

[FLiPMaRC]

That makes a lot of sense, but now I feel stupid for putting a bunch of silica packets in my bag . . . .
Same here :o