Information about silica gel and Desiccant from Reál Marine AS

Did you know that we are probably Norway's largest supplier of silica gel and desiccant? Last year we sold over 10 tons of silica gel!

Plain white silica gel is the desiccant "everyone" uses to keep products dry, from the small "do not eat" bag you find in your shoebox to electronic boards or 40-foot containers.

For the English version, please click here.

"Wikipedia says that "Silica gel is an amorphous and porous form of silicon dioxide, consisting of an irregular three-dimensional framework of alternating silicon and oxygen atoms with cavities and pores on the nanometer scale." In plain English, this means that the beads have lots of cavities in their surface, which gives them a large surface area, in fact up to 750-800 m2/g! The large surface area and cavities mean that silica gel attracts most liquids via adsorption. In other words, there is no chemical reaction, only mechanical forces. This makes silica gel safe to use for most purposes and is also the reason why it is the universal desiccant everyone knows."

The most common is white silica gel, which we stock in bags from 3g up to 2.5kg. Self-indicating silica gel changes color as it becomes saturated with moisture. We stock self-indicating silica gel in 500g , 1000g , 4kg buckets and 25kg pails .

The rule of thumb for calculating how much silica gel you should use is 500g-1kg per m3 of cargo for a 3-month sea voyage, but if you want to calculate more accurately, you can take a look at our calculation in this blog post.

In addition to silica gel, we also supply Molecular Sieve, activated alumina, calcium chloride and desiccant clay. These are other types of desiccants that are often used if you have very sensitive equipment that requires it to be even drier than what silica gel can do. You can also use desiccants together with VCI - read how here.

If you want to find out if white silica gel is saturated/used up, you can either use a digital moisture meter, or we have humidity indicator cards. These change color when the relative humidity exceeds the values ​​on the card. Used silica gel usually goes into regular residual waste - unless you have used it to adsorb hazardous liquids. In that case, it should be disposed of like the hazardous liquid it has adsorbed. We always recommend checking local regulations. Read more about disposing of used desiccant here.

We also supply desiccants with special requirements, for example for military purposes. In this case, MIL-D-3464 Type I or Type II is required. In short, the only requirement is the bag material (e.g. dust-free Tyvek bags – which is what most of the bags we sell are made of) and the labeling of the bags. For some customers, we also make silica gel bags that have a moisture indicator glued on and are sealed in an aluminum bag. We are seeing this more and more, both for aviation/defense and in subsea applications.

Do you have equipment that requires dry air? Don't hesitate to contact us , we have the desiccant you need!