After the Infamous Rogers Centre iPod Drowning Incident of 2012, I started collecting everyone one of those little silica gel desiccant packets that crossed my path. I put them in a ziploc bag with some rice, just in case I should ever have a similar incident in the future.
That paid off this week, when I accidentally overturned a glass of water onto my ipod. I stuck the ipod straight into this bag and left it there for 24 hours, and it came out fully operational (and I think the moisture indicator didn't even turn, knock wood!)
My question: do I need to throw out all these silica packets, or are they still good for further use? I intend to keep adding packets to the bag as I encounter them, but can I keep the "used" ones in there or should I throw them completely out and start over?
4 comments:
You "recharge" silica gel by putting it in the oven.
Don't know if this should be done with the plastic cylinders that say "do not eat." It works for bulk silica gel, such as silica gel cat litter (although that product in its spent form, after its intended use, contains things other than water that won't depart with evaporation). But if you use it just as a dessicant, you should be able to reuse and reuse and reuse. The chemistry concept at work here is called "waters of hydration."
Yeah, I've been trying to figure out whether putting the packets in the oven would cause them to catch fire or melt or something horrible like that.
The internet said you can put them in the sun, but it didn't work (or, at least, they didn't change colour).
Now, you can not use that silica gel packets second time. if we have silica gel beads then we can get regenerate those and use, but this procedure is done in industrial companies only.
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