1. The document describes how a kitchen appliance called the Seal-a-Meal device, which costs less than $100, can be used to create inexpensive and disposable desiccator bags in a chemistry laboratory.
2. The appliance uses rolls of double-walled heavy plastic material to heat seal items together in a vacuum environment. This creates bags that can store air- and water-sensitive chemicals while remaining completely intact.
3. Each bag costs between $0.17-0.34 depending on size, which is much cheaper than traditional glass or plastic desiccators. The bags remain dry indefinitely and provide a low-cost alternative storage method in undergraduate chemistry laboratories.
1. The document describes how a kitchen appliance called the Seal-a-Meal device, which costs less than $100, can be used to create inexpensive and disposable desiccator bags in a chemistry laboratory.
2. The appliance uses rolls of double-walled heavy plastic material to heat seal items together in a vacuum environment. This creates bags that can store air- and water-sensitive chemicals while remaining completely intact.
3. Each bag costs between $0.17-0.34 depending on size, which is much cheaper than traditional glass or plastic desiccators. The bags remain dry indefinitely and provide a low-cost alternative storage method in undergraduate chemistry laboratories.
1. The document describes how a kitchen appliance called the Seal-a-Meal device, which costs less than $100, can be used to create inexpensive and disposable desiccator bags in a chemistry laboratory.
2. The appliance uses rolls of double-walled heavy plastic material to heat seal items together in a vacuum environment. This creates bags that can store air- and water-sensitive chemicals while remaining completely intact.
3. Each bag costs between $0.17-0.34 depending on size, which is much cheaper than traditional glass or plastic desiccators. The bags remain dry indefinitely and provide a low-cost alternative storage method in undergraduate chemistry laboratories.
1. The document describes how a kitchen appliance called the Seal-a-Meal device, which costs less than $100, can be used to create inexpensive and disposable desiccator bags in a chemistry laboratory.
2. The appliance uses rolls of double-walled heavy plastic material to heat seal items together in a vacuum environment. This creates bags that can store air- and water-sensitive chemicals while remaining completely intact.
3. Each bag costs between $0.17-0.34 depending on size, which is much cheaper than traditional glass or plastic desiccators. The bags remain dry indefinitely and provide a low-cost alternative storage method in undergraduate chemistry laboratories.
1500 Journal of Chemical Education Vol. 81 No. 10 October 2004 www.JCE.DivCHED.org
For over a century, solids and liquids that had to be kept dry were stored in glass desiccators containing a drying agent such as anhydrous calcium sulfate. Today, the need for stor- ing a variety of air- and water-sensitive chemicals under dry conditions is still a common practice in undergraduate, gradu- ate, and research chemistry laboratories. Yet the commercial glass and plastic desiccators have become more expensive. 1 Moreover, they chip, crack, and break with regularity in un- dergraduate chemistry laboratories. Vacuum desiccators are even more expensive than the simple two-piece variety. During the past eight decades, a number of inexpensive desiccators (13) have been reported, some made from a va- riety of novel materials such as: plastic sandwich bags (4), coffee cans
(5), and cookie jars
(6). The present article de- scribes how a new kitchen appliance costing less than half the price of a single, large desiccator 1 can be used in the labo- ratory for quickly producing low-cost, disposable vacuum desiccators. The appliance, which has a small foot print (6 in. 15 in.) is marketed for quickly, conveniently, and inex- pensively shrink-wrapping foods for storage in a refrigerator or freezer. But the same device can provide an entire under- graduate chemistry laboratory with easy-to-use and dispos- able desiccator bags for a small fraction of the cost of conventional glass or plastic desiccators. In the present example, the Seal-a-Meal device (Figure 1A) distributed by the Rival Company of the Holmes Group, Inc. had been purchased by the author for less than $100 at a neighborhood K-Mart store. This appliance came with two rolls of a double-walled, heavy-plastic material measuring 11 in. 120 in. (Figure 1E); plus an assortment of specialized plastic bags of various sizes. Two 11 in. 120 in. rolls of the thick shrink-wrapping material (also distributed by Rival) costs less than $10 per box and the two rolls can be used in a laboratory for making from 30 to 60 desiccators. Conventional glass desiccators require careful greasing at the ground-glass interfaces to achieve a perfect seal. Plas- tic desiccators are known to eventually leak because over time the plastic interface tends to warp. But once heat-sealed, the disposable desiccator bags (Figure 1BD) remain completely intact until they are cut open. Each 11 in. 120 in. roll of this material can be used to make approximately 30 small (4 in. 11 in.) disposable desiccator bags for about $0.17 each or 15 large desiccator bags (8 in. 11 in.) for $0.34 each. After the contents are heat sealed together with a desiccant they remain dry indefinitely. Moreover, the shrink-wrapped item and desiccant do not take up more space than the origi- nal items as opposed to the space occupied by a conventional, glass desiccator. An oversized heat-sealed desiccator bag can be used sev- eral times by narrowly cutting it open in a straight line along the seal after its first use. The open side must be trimmed in a straight line so that the bag can be quickly resealed in the Seal-a-Meal device. In addition to serving as an unbreakable and inexpen- sive desiccator, the system is useful for sealing bottles and vials of corrosive and irritating substances and also large bottles of solvent that do not fit into a large desiccator (Fig- ure 1D). Unlike Saran Wrap or similar cling film, once the double-walled, heavy-plastic material is vacuum-sealed it is indefinitely impermeable to vapors. Thus six months after Low-Cost Vacuum Desiccator Frederick Sweet Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, MO 63110; sweetf@medicine.wustl.edu Cost-Effective Teacher edited by Harold H. Harris University of MissouriSt. Louis St. Louis, MO 63121 Figure 1. Adapting an automated kitchen gadget for making vacuum desiccators: (A) The Seal-a-Meal device can be used for heat sealing with or without a vacuum. A 120-inch roll of double-walled, heavy-plastic material is located under the shrink-wrapping section of the appliance that contains a horizontal cutting device. (B) A reagent bottle with Drierite in position for shrink wrap- ping. The entire automated shrink-wrapping process takes about 1530 seconds, depending on the size of the bag. (C) A bottle of isobutyl chloroformate (100 g). (D) A 1-L bottle of dioxane that had been sealed with the kitchen gadget. (E) Extra roll of 120-inch double-walled, heavy-plastic material. In the Laboratory www.JCE.DivCHED.org Vol. 81 No. 10 October 2004 Journal of Chemical Education 1501 having been shrink wrapped, several grams of moisture indi- cating Drierite (behind D in Figure 1) remained completely unchanged. Similarly, no HCl was detected inside the desic- cator after a shrink-wrapped bottle of isobutyl chloroformate (Figure 1C), which forms HCl on contact with moisture, had been standing in a laboratory for five months. The author has not yet sealed materials under an inert atmosphere such as nitrogen or argon. However, this can eas- ily be done by flushing the air out of a bag with a stream of inert gas immediately before vacuum sealing it. Note 1. The costs for desiccators are: $65 for 100 mm and $181 for 250 mm glass desiccators; $67 for 230 mm and $96 for 280 mm Nalgene desiccators; $234 for 140 mm and $494 for 190 mm vacuum desiccators (Fisher Scientific Company Cata- log 2003). Literature Cited 1. Day, J. E.; Walke, E. W. J. Chem. Educ. 1928, 5, 597. 2. Birdwhistell, R. K. J. Chem. Educ. 1967, 44, 667. 3. Hendrixson, R. R.; Whitcomb, D. R.; Palmer, R. A. J. Chem Educ. 1976, 53, 593. 4. Thompson, H. B. J. Chem Educ. 1966, 43, 473. 5. Minnier, C.; Johnson, S.; Matusz, I. J. Chem Educ. 1976, 53, 520. 6. Sarma, B. D. J. Chem Educ. 1983, 60, 906907.