Humidity buffering
Humidity buffering refers to the ability of materials to moderate changes in relative humidity by absorbing and desorbing water vapour from surrounding air. This is also referred to as moisture buffering.
The phenomenon has long been exploited for preserving items from damage that could be caused by either excessively moist or dry conditions.
Examples
- Cigars are usually kept in a wooden box called a humidor. A pan of water is placed in the humidor so that the wood will absorb water vapor at close to 100% relative humidity. It is then used to store the cigars at fairly constant relative humidity, between 55-70%.
- Silica gel is widely used to buffer relative humidity inside museum display cases, packaged clothing, electronics and anything that might be damaged by condensation, or in the example of museum display cases, being too low an RH (relative humidity) as the silica will help protect the objects displayed from mechanical damage due to shrinking and growing with RH changes.
Recently, there has been an interest in the field of building science and architecture in using humidity buffering as a passive indoor climate control, thus reducing the need for air conditioning and ventilation.
gollark: The walls there are skyblocks, which are just sky texture things as a block.
gollark: Somewhat boring AE2 autocrafting core.
gollark: The fusion reactors there can't ever be shut down, or the whole thing will be impossible to restart due to my bad wiring.
gollark: Yes, that is cool.
gollark: I don't like Galacticraft, the later planets are the same as the earlier ones.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.