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Renewable Mini-Dehumidifier |
Just when you thought that living in the tropics was bad enough not being able to enjoy the four seasons, you had to deal with another nuisance - high humidity and moisture. This age-old problem of precious garments, shoes and leather getting moldy, expensive camera and video lenses and tapes being covered with fungus, important documents and files yellowing with moisture and mildew certainly are not new. For musical instruments, moisture has caused rust to the expensive musical equipment, such as guitar strings, the internal soft padding of the acoustic pianos, the amplifiers, etc.! For most of us, it's a heartbreak to see our family photos being damaged due to the moisture. Everyone wished they had a cheap, yet permanent solution to this problem.
The Available Solutions
Of course there are the electrical dry-cabinets for those who can afford to pay premium. These keep your precious belongings dry through the use of an air-drying compressors at the back of the cabinet, which needs to be permanently plugged into the mains. But space is limited to the size of the cabinet. Depending on what size of cabinet you buy, it could set you back by between a hundred to more than five hundred dollars, not forgetting the long-term monthly electrical bills.
More recently there have been the emergence of disposable white powdery Calcium Chloride drying agent dehumidifiers that absorb moisture, which gets collected in a pool of liquid below. But depending on where and how you use this, the collected moisture is actually able to re-vaporize back into the atmosphere, or worse still, spill out if you accidentally puncture the delicate water barrier membrane above. Quite environmentally-unfriendly, having to discard one each time it fills up every month or so.
The Eco-Dry Solution
Could we finally have a high-tech answer to this age-old problem? The answer could lie in eco-dry. Newly launched here in Singapore, eco-dry is an economical, environmentally-friendly and efficient reusable mini-dehumidifier marketed by Q-LIFESTYLE DOTCOM. At a retail price of S$19.95, it may cost more than your average-day Calcium Chloride humidifier, but if you work out the cost based on being reusable over and over again for more than 100 times (that's more than a good five year's worth), it should have your wallets smiling. The key lies in the use of highly moisture absorbing water-glass technology crystals, which the manufacturer claims to be up to twice as effective in moisture absorption when compared with conventional soluble humidity absorbing products. Once the moisture is absorbed, these colorless and non-toxic crystals will not re-release the absorbed moisture back into the air until the unit is regenerated, making it spill-free and keeping your enclosed environment dry.
You will easily know when the unit needs regenerating, when the moisture indicator on the front changes from blue to pink (blue for dry and pink for wet). Simply flip out the plug from the back of the unit. plug it into your nearest electrical socket, and in 8 hours - your unit is as good as new, ready to absorb up to another 120g of moisture! During the regeneration process, the in-built heating element regenerates each and every piece of the crystals using heat-assisted convection. Best of all, the circuit works on both 110V as well as 220V, and is made of non-combustible ABS plastic, making it safe and truly portable - so portable that you can even put one into your camera bag or luggage when you travel.
