What is silica gel?

Everyone's familiar with those little packets of silicate gel, found in thousands of products -- but what exactly do they do? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast and learn more about silica gel.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works dot com
where smart Happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question,
what is silica gel? And why do I find little
packets of it? And everything I buy? Little packets of
silica gel are found in all sorts of products. Because
silica gel is a desiccated it adds orbs and holds

(00:21):
water vapor in leather products and foods like pepperoni. The
lack of moisture can limit the growth of mold and
reduce spoilage in electronics. It prevents condensation, which might damage
the electronics. If a bottle of vitamins contain any moisture
vapor and cooled rapidly, the condensing moisture would ruin the pills.

(00:42):
You'll find little silica gel packets in anything that would
be affected by excess moisture condensation. Silica gel is nearly harmless,
which is why you find it in food products. Silica
or silicon dioxide is the same material found in quartz
that all form contains millions of tiny pores that can

(01:03):
add zorb and hold moisture. Silica gel is essentially porous sand.
Silica gel can add zorb about its weight and moisture
and can take the relative humidity in a closed container
down to about Once saturated, you can drive the moisture
off and reuse silica gel by heating it in an

(01:23):
oven above three hundred degrees fahrenheit or about a hundred
and fifty degrees c. Do you have any ideas or
suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an
email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, go to
how stuff works dot com.