Thanks for the props, Gary. :tu
I'd explain exactly how they work, but everyone would be so bored that they'd throw themselves off a roof.
The simple explanation is that they work on the principle of equilibrium.
The beads want to be equal with their surroundings, so they give off or gather up water to get happy.
The reason they can do that is because of their construction. Stick with me, this is cool...
The beads are full of pores and tunnels. They are laboratory made. The process causes the beads to have gazillions of tiny holes that are exactly 4 angstroms wide. (That's incredibly super small.)
The walls of said tunnels are EXACTLY one molecule thick.
Those molecules have an electrical charge called covalence. Each molecule has an affinity to attach itself to water.
So now, what you have in a pile of beads are thousands upon thousands of miles of tiny tunnels that act like water vacuums. They want water BAD.
The beads suck water from the air until the force of their desire equals the force that the air uses to hold onto water. When the air and the beads are even, that point is called "equilibrium".
There are lots of products that do the same thing. They are generally called dessicants.
Despite what you may have heard, ANY dessicant can be used to control humidity in a controlled environment. It's just that some work better at different RH ranges.
HCM beads are special in that they have almost equal affinity at 65%RH. That means they can give off water at the same speed as they can take it up at 65%RH.
I found that out by doing months and months of tests.
The beads that most everyone uses are made of silica gel (the same as my HCS beads).
They find their push-pull balance point at around 45%RH. As the RH gets higher, they become more water laden and neither give off or take in water as fast as they do at 45%RH.
To exasperate that problem, they are treated with a type of denatured alcohol that further fills the beads, leaving far fewer of their tunnels available to gather or disperse water.
The reason HCS and HCM beads work so much faster are different.
HCS beads (my silica gel product) work better because they don't have any denatured alcohol in them. That's it. No magic. The lack of the additive allows a far greater amount of tunnels available to work with water, so they work a minimum of 438% better than any treated bead product. It also allows them to hold a LOT more water. Somewhere around 22% of their weight at 65%.
That's a major bonus because with all that water available, they almost never need to have water added. In reasonable conditions, they may never need to have water removed or added. If they do, the process is very simple.
HCM beads work so well because they peak at the right range for what we do. That's not entirely correct. At 65%, they want to give off water around 800% faster than any other bead product. They want to gather water at an even greater rate. That rate is so incredible that I couldn't really compare it to anything else, but it's far more than 800% faster than any other medium I tested against.
A couple pros for HCM beads are that they do not degrade at any appreciable rate. Left static, they never degrade. Even if you pour water on them, they are so strong (because of the molecular design) that they do not crack or explode like HCS beads or other bead products.
They do not gather goo from the air like other beads because the pores are too small to grab stink molecules and let them in. Therefore their effectiveness stays pat and does not diminish like HCS and the other beads.
They can be set at ANY RH%age. They work best at between 58% and 72%, which is a statement that is very misleading because a weighted average changes everything, but for our intents and purposes, that's a perfect watered-down statement.
The biggest con so far as HCM beads are concerned is that they require a person to have a decent calibratible hygrometer that's been salt tested very recently, and they need to be watched and maintained to some degree. (In most applications, that degree is "never", but in some instances it can be every few months. In severe instances, although none have been reported, it could be more often. I can imagine such instances but haven't found any yet.)
They're also very small and, as such, they are tough to keep in a container of any sort and tend to "leak" fines out of the fabric I use if they get moved around a lot.
Being as I don't want to be responsible for anyone's untimely demise, I'll shut up now.
Believe it or not, this really was the very simplified version. I could go on forever.
If anyone has any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. :tu
I can't promise I can relay information that took me months to gather in 500 words or less, but I'll do the best I can. :r
