Industrial Desiccant Dehumidifier

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In mutual with so numerous questions the answer starts with…”it depends”. It depends largely upon where you live because the introductory of two key issues is the ambient temperature of your garage.

If your home is in the one of the warmer constituents of the world you have more choices to choose from but if there are months of the year when your garage may be 60°F/16°C or lower for weeks or months at a time you will need a dehumidifier capable of effective low temperature operation.

A simple room dehumidifier will be sufficient but, if it is a refrigerant type it will have to have an active defrost feature. An active defrost system, many times referred to as “hot gas defrost”, stops the compressor and redirects warm air throughout the cold coil to melt the accumulated ice. This quickly removes the problem, the compressor restarts and your dehumidifier is back in business.

Few room dehumidifiers have this feature. In it is place they have a passive defrost feature commonly referred to as “auto-defrost”. What happens when ice forms is that the compressor stops, the fan keeps running and the ice is melted by the incoming air.

The lower the ambient temperature the longer it takes for the ice to melt. In low temperatures the dehumidifier will be defrosting for more time than it is dehumidifying.

Dehumidifiers with “auto-defrost” are ofttimes rated for operation in temperatures as low as 41°F/5°C but all this actually means is that the dehumidifier will not be damaged at such low temperatures. The sad truth is they are hardly effective when it gets so cold.

The second key issue is the level of relative humidity you need to maintain. To protect your car, your tools, instrumentation and anything else made with steel from corrosion it is essential to keep relative humidity no higher than 55%, preferably 50%.

Refrigerant dehumidifiers begin to struggle when relative humidity falls under 50%. A room dehumidifier of reasonable quality will maintain 50% RH but it will do so more reliably if it has a little more power than the area of your garage might suggest is needed. It will cost more to buy a more or less more spectacular dehumidifier but it will remove more moisture per Dollar, or Pound, of energy consumed, and ought to run for less hours per day, so may be less pricey in the longer term.

The idealisti solution is a desiccant dehumidifier. What we are talking regarding here is a unit that looks like a refrigerant dehumidifier, sounds like a refrigerant dehumidifier and has a fan, but removes moisture by capturing person water molecules on a desiccant (water adsorbing) wheel or rotor. That “d” in adsorbing is not a typo. The word describes a chemical process, distinct from absorption which is a physical action typified by a sponge soaking up water. This type of dehumidifier is not to be confused with containers of silica gel, without moving parts, which remove little amounts of water and are best suitable to closets and drawers.

Because refrigeration is not involved in the procedure this type of dehumidifier will operate rather happily down to 33°F/1°C and will comfortably reduce relative humidity underneath 50%.

In the UK both types of dehumidifier are readily available. The Mitsubishi MJE16VX is an splendid refrigerant dehumidifier with hot gas defrost and the idealisti refrigerant dehumidifier for a garage. If a desiccant dehumidifier is preferent there are assorted to choose from, including the highly regarded Meaco DD122FW-MK4.

In the USA the circumstance is not so good. Desiccant units are very hard to find and are not available from the major retailers. Refrigerant dehumidifiers with hot gas defrost are closely evenly rare altho one or two suppliers are listing the Mitsubishi unit, but at the ludicrous price of closely $800, more than twice the price of those on sale in the UK.

For $800 or a little less a little industrial dehumidifier, such as the Ebac CD30, may be purchased. A unit such as this provides hot gas defrost, is ranked down to 33°F/1°C and offers the more outstanding reliability of a unit built for demanding industrial applications. Small desiccant dehumidifiers built for industrial use are likewise available but are much more expensive.

This kind of expense may not even be considered by most humans but if you have a classic car in storage in a garage you may feel it is worth the investment.

One final point; if the contents of your garage are sufficiently precious to warrant the expense of a dehumidifier it may be advisable to invest a little more to buy a good quality hygrometer, a device for measuring relative humidity. The humidistats on dehumidifiers, more specially room dehumidifiers, are not always accurately calibrated. Better to be safe than sorry.