Laboratory drying ovens are standard equipment in most laboratories and are used for high forced volume heat convection applications. Regardless of the set temperature, they can provide uniform heating for the entire device. Generally speaking, most laboratory ovens are manufactured at temperatures ranging from ambient temperature to about 300°C. Ovens with higher operating temperatures are generally used for professional applications in the fields of physics, material processing, and electronics. Other uses include annealing, die bond curing, drying, polyimide baking, and sterilization.
We will discuss the topic of vacuum drying, which is the use of vacuum and heating to remove large amounts of absorbed water or other solvents from the product. The liquid to be removed is usually a natural part of the product, a residue from a previous operation, or used to dissolve, mix, or apply chemicals as part of the process design. Although freeze-drying is carried out using vacuum in the drying process, the freeze-drying process is not involved here.
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vacuum drying oven is a very cool and useful tool. You can use this tool for multiple purposes like removing moisture, degassing, baking out, and preventing reactions. There are many products that need to be dried in a vacuum oven, such as medicines, implantable medical devices, satellites and other space hardware, temperature-sensitive products with retained moisture, epoxy resin; it can be dried by vacuum, food analysis (allowed for packaging food Moisture) essential oils extracted from plants.
The working principle of the vacuum drying oven:
To dry, the moisture must change from liquid to gaseous. After the vacuum furnace reduces the pressure, this reduces the temperature at which the water evaporates from the liquid state to the gas state. After that, this pressure change causes the water to evaporate, thereby drying at a lower temperature. Under vacuum, water always boils at a lower temperature.
Benefits of the vacuum drying oven:
As mentioned earlier, the vacuum drying oven has many advantages.
Because the oxygen content is very low, vacuum drying does not require an oxidation process. The next advantage is continuous drying without hard skin on the top. Another advantage is that it absorbs moisture from hard-to-reach corners and crevices. The evaporated and vacuum dried fluid can be recovered later. Another benefit of vacuum drying is the gentle way, because this drying will not even disturb light and powdery items. The most important benefit of vacuum drying is that it reduces the risk for workers. It likes to prevent the exhaust of hazardous solvents and chemicals from being trapped instead of entering the surrounding air.
Vacuum drying ovens are used in many industries, such as aerospace industry,
medical industry, electronics, etc. If you want to know more about vacuum drying, please click
XCH Biomedical.