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How Silica Gel Took Over the World
- Civitello 2y agoWhat a perfect opportunity to link to one of my favourite candies https://waskstudio.com/products/sealed-fate-candy-packets https://waskstudio.com/products/sealed-fate-candy-packets Balls of hard candy shaped and packaged like silica gel!
- andrewSC 2y agoWhat a fun little website!
- jonasdegendt 2y agoEvery time I stumble onto it I have to resist not buying five gimmicky things.
- kridsdale1 2y agoMy favorite is the Short Sided Ruler. Perfect for April 1st.
- fuzzythinker 2y agoGot to ask why?
- lovich 2y agoWhy not?
- fsckboy 2y agoself explanatory, it's dessi-can instead of dessi-cant
- buildsjets 2y agoWhy ask why? Try Bud Dry.
- neilv 2y agoLolimsorandom/imsoedgy types have plenty of space to work in, without messing with child safety.
- binarymax 2y agoAlso a perfect opportunity to link to one of my favorite comics https://onegianthand.com/post/188730414621/silica-gel https://onegianthand.com/post/188730414621/silica-gel
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- stavros 2y agoThe big bags of that candy also come with an actual silicagel packet to keep humidity from ruining the candy, so it's always a fun game of "guess what's edible".
- lupusreal 2y agoI'm earnestly surprised those are legal. Here's another idea, sweet fruit juice concentrate in a drain cleaner bottle. What could go wrong?
- pests 2y agoHow about a cleaning chemical packaged to look like fruit juice? Fabulous.
- Fr3ck 2y agoDo they have candy that looks like Tide pods?
- paulgerhardt 2y agoWhat a perfect opportunity to link one of my favorite podcast episodes https://99percentinvisible.org/article/beyond-biohazard-danger-symbols-cant-last-forever/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/beyond-biohazard-dang... Why danger symbols can’t last forever.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> Benford was brought in to help calculate the probability that someone or something would intrude on the site for as long as it remains dangerous — approximately the next 10,000 years. It turns out, few things (outside of organized religions and ritualized traditions) last that long. What a weird thing to say. No organized religion or ritualized tradition has ever lasted that long.
- saaaaaam 2y agoIn the post-Hellenistic world yes, but I remember reading something about an aboriginal fire ritual that had been practised by indigenous people in Australia for something like 12000 years. I think there are also very long traditions of ritual practice in Native American peoples. Because these traditions were passed down orally or through generational practice they have gradually been lost which is sad. I think there’s also a cave in the Middle East where there is evidence that it had been a ritual centre for 30000 years. And you could probably make a relatively convincing argument that the ‘dying and rising god’ tradition that underpins Christian ritual is just a syncretic continuum going backwards from Jesus Christ to Dionysus to Osiris to Iah to moon deities - the moon being a ‘dying and rising’ entity, which itself underpins a wide tradition of fertility ritual. So although it’s a stretch there is maybe some logic behind the statement!
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> but I remember reading something about an aboriginal fire ritual that had been practised by indigenous people in Australia for something like 12000 years In Australia they're very proud of asserting things like that, but obviously there is no evidence it's true. On the other hand, there's lots of evidence that that doesn't happen. > Because these traditions were passed down orally or through generational practice they have gradually been lost which is sad. The fact that this mechanism of loss exists is already sufficient to prove that a tradition can't last 10,000 years.
- amiga386 2y agoVsauce Michael approved! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OEYqWMHyhtM https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OEYqWMHyhtM
- Mistletoe 2y agoStarting to put these in my hygroscopic fertilizers was a game changer. No more bricks of unusable waterlogged crap after a few years. You can regenerate the beads in the microwave and you can buy color-changing ones on Amazon that indicate their status.
- eande 2y agoAnother one of these fascinating super absorbent materials is SAP (Superabsorbent polymer). It is heavily used in diapers, tissues, water retention for plants, etc. SAP can absorb liquid up to 30-60 times its own volume. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superabsorbent_polymer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superabsorbent_polymer
- dist-epoch 2y agoI think it's more expensive, and I'm not sure it can absorb vapor (not liquid) It's fun that it has the same refractive index as water, so if you put clear ones in water they disappear. Then you ask someone to put their had in a bowl with them for a surprise.
- btilly 2y agoMy kids loved that stuff when they were young.
- genewitch 2y agoAka orbees. Also useful as a soil amendment if you have clay soil, it stops it from claying so much and retains water underground for plants. They make glow in the dark ones, which I put into a masonry jar with some distilled water and a drop of bleach, I light it from underneath with a USB LED and it glows for about an hour. Cool night time light. Back in the early 90s they had a different name and they were irregularly shaped. This was for Soil Amendment. I think it started with a Z.
- joecool1029 2y ago> I think it started with a Z. zeolite? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite
- genewitch 2y agoi don't think so. It was a brand name of whatever SAP they had decided was safe for plants to bathe in. I found some about a decade ago, just by asking about water retention crystals at an agricultural outlet. I think it's cheaper to buy orbees when they're on clearance, though.
- nvader 2y agoI didn't find this in the article, so: You can "recharge" silical gel by baking in the oven at 120 C for a couple of hours. If you do, be careful to remove the casing before you do, unless it is heat safe. I have a small collection of oven safe dessicant packs that I keep on hand for emergency drying electronics.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- JohnFen 2y agoI use a food dehydrator for this, but the principle is the same.
- nvader 2y agoWhen my last phone took an unsanctioned swim, my research suggested that a food dehydrator is a last resort. It risks forcing water vapour further into the electronics of the system, rather than encouraging it to move out. I did find a clever solution online that tried to induce mechanical suction on your phone to force the vapour out, but it was too expensive for a one off use. In the end I had to resort to the food dryer anyway, after the silica gel failed to work.
- JohnFen 2y agoI've never used it for drying wet electronics. The couple of times I've dunked my phone, I've just let it air-dry for a couple of days and it's been good. I use silca gel for storing 3D printing filament and long-term clothes storage.
- nemonemo 2y agoThis sounds like a great idea, but how do you keep it from being "drained" or hydrated?
- reverendsteveii 2y ago
- amiga386 2y agohttps://onegianthand.com/post/188730414621/silica-gel https://onegianthand.com/post/188730414621/silica-gel
- FridayoLeary 2y agoWhy does it have the words DON'T EAT printed on every single package? you don't usually come across such warnings on other products.
- timerol 2y agoYour body likes having water inside of it, and doesn't like having glass shards inside of it
- lovecg 2y agoWith millions and millions of those things around I’d guess quite a few get ingested accidentally and we don’t hear of them causing problems. It must be pretty safe (well as safe as eating a small amount of sand is).
- celticninja 2y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-186193,00.html#:~:text=Rest%20assured%2C%20the%20contents%20of,may%20be%20a%20choking%20hazard.%22 https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-186193...
- celticninja 2y agoActually they are quite safe to eat. https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-186193,00.html#:~:text=Rest%20assured%2C%20the%20contents%20of,may%20be%20a%20choking%20hazard.%22 https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-186193...
- marcosdumay 2y agoIn small quantities. As somebody already pointed, your body likes to keep its water inside it, it also doesn't like when stuff carries large quantities of unmixed digestive fluids from one part of your body to another. They are probably quite harmful if large pieces get eaten in non-small quantities. Or powder in large quantities that are not previously mixed with a liquid. But I don't know of anybody that tested that.
- jchw 2y ago> That single gram of silica gel could have an internal surface area of eight hundred square meters—the size of almost two basketball courts. For us Americans, that's about 8600 square feet...and around a seventh of a football field.
- wkat4242 2y agoYeah it's a bit of a weird way the article puts it. Measuring in square meters but then referencing basket ball courts which are almost nonexistent in Europe :). They should have used a football (but soccer, not the American kind) field. Though in that case I guess it will be a fairly small division of one too which makes it sound smaller than it is. I honestly have no idea how big a basketball court is.
- jajko 2y agoWhat do you mean they don't exist. I see them everywhere, indoor, outdoor, also every single school gym regardless of level is also a basketball court. I've lived in 3 countries here east & west Europe and this is valid across different places and cultures.
- wkat4242 2y agoHuh weird I've never seen one in Netherlands or Spain. In the Netherlands it's not popular at all though we have a similar thing that is ("korfbal"). My school did have these basketball boards but we never used them and I'm pretty sure the room was not sized for them either.
- dustincoates 2y agoSoccer fields don't have a standard size, however, so you're not going to be able to give a true comparison.
- jchw 2y agoI'd love to say that my comment was some commentary on the weirdness of the units, but really, it just stuck out to me, and I thought it'd be funny if I treated "gridiron football field" as the imperial system equivalent unit to the metric "basketball court" unit. I rarely make comments on HN that are mostly just humorous and not actually intending to be on-topic... but every once a year or so.
- krunck 2y agoLets not forget the MST3k silica gel skit in: https://mst3k.fandom.com/wiki/MST3K_1103_-_The_Time_Travelers https://mst3k.fandom.com/wiki/MST3K_1103_-_The_Time_Traveler... https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8hb1jh https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8hb1jh @ 00:02:00
- Animats 2y agoFive ads and seven "subscribe" buttons, for one short article about silica gel. Wikipedia has a better article.[1] > You can just microwave them too, on low power... Oven drying has the advantage that you can set the temperature so there's no risk of overheating anything. It's hard to hurt silica gel itself with kitchen level heat. Melting point 1200C. The packet it comes in is more of a risk. Although there are forms with other chemicals that change color when humid. Also, heating wet desiccant fast enough to produce steam might crack the material. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silica_gel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silica_gel
- pwg 2y agoUblock Origin defaulting to blocking all the Javascript by default and the only "ad" is the "get this newsletter" ad near the bottom.
- ge96 2y agoThe word desicant is burned into my mind from this guy talking about building some AC system
- benwikler 2y agoCan't see this headline without thinking of my favorite cartoon of all time https://www.reddit.com/r/me_irl/comments/sqap29/me_irl/ https://www.reddit.com/r/me_irl/comments/sqap29/me_irl/
- benwikler 2y agoAh, seeing that (apparently like-minded amiga386) came here to post the same thing: https://onegianthand.com/post/188730414621/silica-gel https://onegianthand.com/post/188730414621/silica-gel
- xfp 2y agoThe ones in food are often oxygen absorbers instead of dessicants. They contain iron "sand" that is, unfortunately, not reusable. They're usually very flat and have a "do not microwave" warning on them in addition to "do not eat". (This is not to say dessicant packets aren't used in food, just that not all of those packets are dessicants)
- crazygringo 2y agoCan you point to an example? Silica packets are definitely used in foods that need to be kept super-dry, like seaweed or nuts -- absorbing residual moisture that was in the product during packaging. I've never heard of an oxygen absorber used in food. A lot of snacks and things (e.g. all potato chips) in airtight containers are packaged in nitrogen so there's no oxygen in the first place. Are they for small-scale food production that can't use nitrogen? I've never encountered them in my life.
- bobsmooth 2y agoBacon bits, fried onions, beef jerky.
- xfp 2y agoThe Gimme-brand seaweed snacks I get contain oxygen absorbers. So do packages of Tillamook Country Smoker jerky and meat sticks. They seem to be fairly common with packages of jerky and other self-stable cured meats.
- numpad0 2y agoThere are both. Oxygen absorbers are used for moist snacks, apparently.
- Symbiote 2y agoI've seen these in imported Asian products, especially from China and Japan. Biscuits and similar dry snacks. I've never seen it for a European product.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Uzmanali 2y agoAs a kid, I imagined silica gel was a special treat. It seemed like the ultimate ‘DO NOT EAT’ dare. I put one in my mouth, waiting for superpowers or disaster. Turns out, it just tasted like disappointment and regret. 10/10 would not recommend, but at least I lived to tell the tale!
- moonlighter 2y agoFormer W.R. Grace employee: Molecular Sieve Desiccant Beads (also manufactured by W.R.Grace) are even more absorbent than regular silica gel. It's found in most double-pane windows inside the metal track between both panes; slowly absorbing any moisture over many years to keep them from fogging/going 'blind'. You can use MS to dry flowers in record time... and use it to quickly heat up baby food in a pinch if needed... just put a smaller container of food in a bigger pod filled with MS and pour water of the MS... it's ultra-rapid absorption of water creates heat as a byproduct.
- dredmorbius 2y agoI'd just learned of (and shared a link to) a related technology, "getters", which similarly hold tight vacuums in various applications for years if necessary: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43498489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43498489> Those are used in vacuum-sealed windows and glazings (the topic of the post I was commenting to). There are also moisture scavengers put into cooling applications (refrigerators and A/C) to remove any incidental water from refrigerant, which I suspect operate more like your MSDBs.
- owenversteeg 2y agoGetters can hold tight vacuums for several decades, even! I have many vacuum fluorescent displays from the 70s still working perfectly. As long as the getter spot is shiny and not white, it is holding vacuum fine.
- dboreham 2y agoAhhh. This explains why my glass panes go "bad" after 20-30 years in the harsh Montana conditions we have.
- dredmorbius 2y agoClearly, you can just put the window in the microwave for a few seconds to refresh it ;-)
- jas39 2y agoThis is sold as crystal cat litter. Very useful to put a sock in the car, the boat or the check-in luggage.
- yetihehe 2y agoCareful with check-in luggage. Apparently it might be mistaken for crystal meth [1]. [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/man-jailed-in-bust-of-the-year-after-cops-mistake-cat-litter-for-meth_n_58754d28e4b03c8a02d3b52f https://www.huffpost.com/entry/man-jailed-in-bust-of-the-yea...
- jas39 2y agoYes, I imagine in Singapore: - Is this chrystal meth, lah? - No, it's cat litter. - You stoopid, that is even worse!
- thaumasiotes 2y ago"I ate the DO NOT EAT packet in my pepperoni. Am I going to die?" "Well, everyone's going to die eventually." "Everyone? Oh my God... WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?" https://explosm.net/comics/rob-pepperoni https://explosm.net/comics/rob-pepperoni
- tim333 2y agoarchive link https://web.archive.org/web/20250401195714/https://www.scopeofwork.net/silica-gel/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250401195714/https://www.scope...
- zzbn00 2y agoI reuse ones I find in consumer goods by putting them into a jar, together with open superglue bottle(s), and putting the jar into fridge. Not a scientific study, but it does seem to keep the glue for longer then just fridge.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoIsn't it also because the jar is closed that the superglue keeps for longer? A fridge also dehydrates the air (condenses on the back wall in most cases).
- zzbn00 2y agoMaybe that would be enough. But the belt-and-braces approach of superglue with silica gel bags in a closed jar, in a fridge, seems to work well and has meant the superglue is still usable when I end up needing it....
- curtisszmania 2y ago[dead]
- dkbrk 2y agoCNC Kitchen put out a great video on the practical use of silica gel. I especially found his exploration of different methods of drying to be of interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tHInlFfMcM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tHInlFfMcM
- THE_FORT 2y agoThis was fantastically well written. Big thank you to the author and the poster!
- amelius 2y agoSilica is great for removing humidity from air. But what I want is to remove oxygen from air, so my food stays fresh longer. Any clean and easy to use substance/method for that purpose?
- Luc 2y agoOxygen absorbers. Little paper packets of iron powder.
- dawnerd 2y agoI think a lot of us might even confuse the two. The packets look fairly similar too.
- pumnikol 2y agoYeah don't. Like many metals, finely dispersed iron can self-combust on air. I'd suggest an air-tight packaging filled with CO2, or, if your food is susceptible to acid, N2, if at all feasible. Industry uses additives similar to hydroquinone, mixed directly into, e.g., plastics. Plenty of them are food-safe, but I wouldn't know where to buy them if you aren't a business.
- Luc 2y agoYou leave the iron powder in the packets. No need to disperse it, and certainly not in the air.
- iglio 2y agoVacuum
- chneu 2y agoRadiolab did an amazing episode on food freshness. They talk about plastic produce packaging, which is a bit of a modern marvel. https://radiolab.org/podcast/forever-fresh https://radiolab.org/podcast/forever-fresh Tldr: those plastic bags that salads come in are WAY more interesting than you think. They're selectively permeable membranes that only allow certain gasses in/out.
- peterarmstrong 2y ago"That single gram of silica gel could have an internal surface area of eight hundred square meters—the size of almost two basketball courts." This reads like something from The Three Body Problem :)
- IAmBroom 2y agoNot mentioned by the article: 99% of all silica gel packets are utilized cosmetically, with no practical effect. Is your equipment shipped in non-airtight containers, like cardboard boxes? That silica gel will absorb all the water it can before it leaves the factory. It effectively does nothing after that. Are your silica gel packets stored in non-airtight bags? In that case, they're spent before they enter the packagin at all. Did you save a bunch of silica gel packets from stuff Amazon sent you, and use them to "dry out" your gym gear (I have known friends to do this). Those packets are long-since "full", and do nothing. (My friend: "Well, it can't hurt!" And it also can't help.) They aren't cordless water pumps, moving humidity out of the air perpetually into their contents - but that's how most people view them.
- spicybbq 2y agoIs this true? Are you suggesting that manufacturers are adding the packets for psychological reasons? Even if they are used up by the time a consumer sees them, are we sure they had no benefit at an earlier time?
- dm03514 2y ago“That single gram of silica gel could have an internal surface area of eight hundred square meters—the size of almost two basketball courts.“ Can someone help explain this? I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. The tiny packet has this much surface area due to how much space exists within the balls???
- AngryData 2y agoYes, think of it like crumpling up tissue paper into a tiny little ball. Lots of surface area, but it can be packed into a really small size.
- psyclobe 2y agoYea but what happens if you eat it???