Relative humidity (RH RH ) is defined by the following equation:

RH=p vap p sat RH=pvappsat

Where p vap pvap is the vapour pressure and p sat psat is the saturation vapour pressure. VAPOUR

Water boils when the vapor pressure is greater than the ambient pressure.

Water evaporates when the vapor pressure is greater than partial pressure of water in the
atmosphere.

At room temperature, the vapor pressure of water is around 0.03atm. So 0.1atm is

insufficient to cause boiling. If, once the vessel reaches 0.1atm the pump stops moving air,
that will cause it to saturate and evaporation will slow.

1) Water evaporation/Boiling can only happen up to 100% humidity of the (little) air in the
container. When this is reached, the water stays in its liquid form.

2) Water boils and evaporates irrespective of the presence of air and irrespective of its
humidity. The evaporation increases the gaseous volume and the vacuum pump removes
this extra vapour while fighting to keep the pressure at 0.1 Atmospheres.

The reason I ask is because I want to dry something in a vacuum and I want to know if I just
keep the vacuum at 0.1 Atm or if I should pulsate with Vacuum, then fill with dry air, then
vacuum again and then fill with dry air again....

https://www.pfeiffer-vacuum.com/en/know-how/basic-calculations/calculations/condenser-mode/

https://www.dekkervacuum.com/resource-library/knowledge-database/technical-data/calculate-air-
leakage-rates/

Calculate Air Leakage Rates

The air leakage in a vacuum system should be determined when sizing the vacuum pump by
using the following method:

1. Install an accurate absolute pressure vacuum gauge, measuring in Torr (mm Hg absolute).
2. Calculate the total volume of the vacuum system in cubic feet.
3. Pump down the system below the minimum required operating pressure.
 4. While the vacuum pump is running, close the inlet valve.
5. Stop the vacuum pump.
6. Note the rate of pressure rise on the absolute vacuum gauge over a period of 30

Q = (Pr x V) / (T x Po) in which:

Q = Pump capacity at operating pressure (ACFM)

Pr = Pressure rise (Torr)
V = Total system volume (ft3)
T = Time (minutes)
Po = System operating pressure

Example:

A system with a volume of 1,000 ft3 has a pressure rise from 25 - 75 Torr in 30 minutes.
The system design operating pressure is 60 Torr.

Q = ((75 - 25)1,000) / (30 x 60) = 27.7 ACFM

A capacity of 27.7 ACFM at 60 Torr is required to overcome just the air leakage in the system.
This capacity must be added to the capacity required to handle the process.

Vacuum drying is the mass transfer operation in which the moisture present in a substance,
usually a wet solid, is removed by means of creating a vacuum. In chemical processing industries
like food processing, pharmacology, agriculture, and textiles, drying is an essential unit operation
to remove moisture.[1] Vacuum drying is generally used for the drying of substances which are
hygroscopic and heat sensitive, and is based on the principle of creating a vacuum to decrease
the chamber pressure below the vapor pressure of the water, causing it to boil. With the help of
vacuum pumps, the pressure is reduced around the substance to be dried. This decreases the
boiling point of water inside that product and thereby increases the rate of evaporation
significantly. The result is a significantly increased drying rate of the product.[2] The pressure
maintained in vacuum drying is generally 0.03–0.06 atm and the boiling point of water is 25-30
°C. The vacuum drying process is a batch operation performed at reduced pressures and lower
relative humidity compared to ambient pressure, enabling faster drying.

Vacuum dryer

Vacuum dryer is the equipment with the help of which vacuum drying is carried out. In the
pharmaceutical industry vacuum dryer is known by a common name called vacuum oven.
Vacuum dryers are sometimes made up of cast iron, but most now are made of stainless steel, so
that they can bear the high vacuum pressure without any kind of deformation .The oven is
divided into hollow trays which increases the surface area for heat conduction .The oven door is
locked air tight and is connected to vacuum pump to reduce the pressure.

The materials to be dried are kept on the trays inside the vacuum dryer and pressure is reduced
by means of vacuum pump. The dryer door is tightly shut and steam is passed through the space
between trays and jacket so that the heat transfer occurs by conduction. Water vapors from the
feed is sent into the condenser and after drying vacuum pump is disconnected and the dried
product is collected from the trays.

Applications

Vacuum dryer can be used to dry heat sensitive hygroscopic and toxic materials. If the feed for
drying is a solution, it can be dried using vacuum dryer as the solvent can be recovered by
condensation. To improve quality of products, such as for fruit preservation, hybrid drying
combining osmotic dehydration followed by heat pump drying and microwave-vacuum drying
proved effective.[1]

References

1. Figiel, A; Michalska, A (2016). "Overall Quality of Fruits and Vegetables Products Affected by the
Drying Processes with the Assistance of Vacuum-Microwaves". International Journal of Molecular
Sciences. 18 (1): 71. doi:10.3390/ijms18010071. PMC 5297706.
2. Saraswathi B. "Vacuum dryer". www.pharmainfo.net. Retrieved 2016-04-05.

History of Vacuum

A Brief History of Vacuum Technology

December 15, 2013 by Dan Herring

Early History
The history of vacuum technology is a fascinating one. It seems to have begun in
ancient Greece when the philosopher Democritus (circa 460 to 375 B.C.) proposed that
the world was made up of tiny particles that he called atoms (atomos, Greek:
undividable). Democritus’ belief was that empty space (in other words, in modern
terminology, a vacuum) existed between the atoms, which moved according to the
general laws of mechanics. Democritus, together with his teacher Leucippus, may
indeed be considered as the inventors of the concept of a vacuum and our modern view
of physics is heavily influenced by their ideas.
However, it was the thinking of Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.) that dominated the scientific
community up until the 16th century. Aristotle denied the existence of a vacuum as it
conflicted with the idea that the universe was comprised of countless individual
particles. According to Aristotle, nature consisted of the four basic elements namely
water, earth, air, and fire. In fact, the word vacuum comes to us from the Latin word
“vacuus” meaning empty or “vacare” meaning “to be empty”.
Figure 11
Medieval Times
Up until 1300 A.D., phrases such as “horror vacui” (i.e., nature abhors a vacuum) were
in common use and early scientific investigators such as Bruno (1548 – 1600 A.D.)
were burned at the stake for their beliefs! Renaissance writers such as Descartes (1596
– 1650) as well as the Catholic Church stubbornly refused to acknowledge the very
existence of a vacuum. Eventually, however, scientific progress on the subject could not
be stymied and by 1600 the possibility or impossibility of a space without matter was a
hotly debated issue within the scientific and philosophical community of Italy, and later,
France and Germany.
In 1613, Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) proposed and subsequently proved that air had
both weight and density. As a result, for the first time, air was considered a substance
with a specific weight. This brought about the further assumption that air could in some
way, be removed from a given space.
Galilei’s experiment led to one by Gasparo Berti (1600 – 1643) in 1640, and
subsequently Evangelista Torricelli (1608 – 1647) in 1644. Torricelli used a glass tube
about 1 m in length, and filled it with mercury. He sealed the open end of the tube with a
fingertip and then flipped the sealed end of the tube facing downwards. He then
submerged the tube in a mercury reservoir and removed his finger, allowing the
mercury inside the tube to be in contact with the reservoir. The column of mercury in the
tube sank to 76 cm, measured from the liquid surface of the reservoir. The space left in
the glass tube above the mercury was in fact a vacuum. The level of mercury was
independent of the volume above. His work, known as the Torricelli experiment, was the
very first successful attempt to produce a vacuum, convincing the scientific community
of its existence. The Torricelli experiment is said to be one of the key scientific
experiments of natural science. An earlier attempt of this experiment by Gasparo Berti
using water was less successful.

Evangelista Torricelli with his mercury barometer.

In 1646, Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) repeated the Torricelli experiment trying other
types of liquids. His findings led to the understanding that the maximum height was
inversely proportional to the density of the liquid used. Pascal had a discussion with
philosopher Descartes in 1647, in which they developed the idea of air-pressure
measurements at different altitudes using a Torricellian tube.
Around 1650, Otto von Guericke (1602 – 1686), one of the leading “vacuist”s of his day
(that is, a person claiming vacuum is possible) produced a vacuum in a specially
constructed sphere. After evacuating the sphere and leaving it untouched for several
days, air started somehow seeping into the sphere. Investigation into the problem led to
the discovery that air was seeping into the sphere, mainly through the pistons of the
pump and seals of the valves. To combat this phenomenon, Guericke constructed a
new pump whose parts were sealed by water, an idea used even to this day, but with oil
instead of water.
Further scientific experiments were performed as well during the early days of vacuum.
Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) proved that the free fall speed of a feather in a vacuum
is exactly equal to that of a piece of lead. Robert Boyle (1627 – 1691) found that the
product of volume and pressure was constant. Guillaume Amontons (1663 – 1705) in
France showed that this constant is temperature dependent.
Although early scientists made several advances in vacuum, there was still no clear
definition of a vacuum. Up until 1874, the Torricellian tube was the only instrument
available for vacuum measurement, being limited to about 0.5 mm Hg (67 Pa). By the
end of the medieval period, the Aristotelian philosophy (that vacuum did not exist) was
no longer accepted.
The Age of Enlightenment
During a fifty year span from 1850 – 1900, activity in the development of vacuum
technology was driven first, by the needs of scientific research and later by the
demands of the incandescent lamp industry. During this period the attainable pressure
was reduced by six decades and equipment became increasingly sophisticated. For
example, advancements in seal technology and the necessity to thoroughly outgas
vacuum equipment became readily apparent. However, it wasn’t until the development
of the gas kinetic theory by Pieter von Clausing (1898 – 1994), James Clerk Maxwell
(1831 – 1879) and Ludwig Boltzmann (1844 – 1906), as well as the invention of the
gauge by Herbert McLeod (1841–1923) in 1874, that vacuum indeed was considered a
measurable physical quantity.
In 1879, Thomas Alva Edison (1847 – 1931) began using vacuum technology to help
produce his first lamps. Edison utilized a modified mercury drop pump when
experimenting with his early inventions and finally on his first production of electric
lamps where a pressure of less than 10-3 Torr was necessary for the chemical gettering
of water.
The 20th Century
At the beginning of the 20th century, the use of vacuum as an industrial process was
just emerging, driven by the invention of the electric light. The introduction of the radio
and of television, both of which depended on vacuum tubes, helped expand the demand
for vacuum. Metallurgical advantages of processing in a vacuum were soon widely
recognized. The first industrial order on record for vacuum furnaces was in 1929 by
Raytheon Corporation.
 Figure 21 – Progress in Lowest
Generated and Measured Pressure in Vacuum from 1660 to 1900.
Two individuals had a profound impact on the industry in this period, namely Wolfgang
Gaede (1878-1945) in Germany and Irving Langmuir (1881-1957) in the United States.
Gaede invented the rotary mercury pump and Langmuir worked on gas-filled
incandescent lamps. At the dawn of the nuclear age in the 1950’s the development of
even more sophisticated vacuum applications followed. These developments in vacuum
science and technology include high energy particle physics, atomic energy, isotope
separation, optical and microelectronic coatings, heat sensitive fluids (e.g. photographic
emulsions) and vacuum metallurgy (e.g. melting).
The Modern Era
Today, vacuum applications in industry spans a wide gambit, from adherence devices
(e.g. suction pads) to the deposition of electronic circuits on silicon microchips. The
vacuum requirements are as varied as the particular processes using vacuums. In the
vacuum range of 1 Torr to near atmosphere, applications can range from mechanical
handling, oil degassing, gas sampling, concentration of aqueous solutions, distillation,
filtration, impregnation of electrical components, steel steam degassing and vacuum
packing and forming.
The use of lower pressures, those in the 10-4 to 10-5 Torr range are used to improve
many metallurgical processes, such as sintering, heat treatment, casting, melting, and
brazing. Other chemical processes that also need this range of vacuum include vacuum
distillation and freeze-drying. The process of freeze-drying is used extensively by
pharmaceutical companies in preparation of vaccines and antibiotics, as well as storing
of skin and blood plasma.
Applications in the process range of 10-6 Torr and below are used for thin-film coating,
cryogenics (low-temperature range) and electrical insulation. The production of lamps;
television picture tubes, X-ray tubes; optical, decorative, and electrical thin-film coatings;
as well as mass spectrometer leak detectors all utilize pressures as low as 10 -6 Torr.
Thin-film coating technology, for example, involves the vaporization of pure metal or
compounds under high vacuum from a source material onto a substrate (base material).
The base material is often glass, ceramic, or silica for electrical coatings; plastic for
decorative coatings; or glass for optical coatings.
Lower vacuum ranges down to 10-9 Torr are used for research, laboratory experiments
and even more sophisticated vacuum applications such as thermonuclear energy
conversion experiments, microwave tubes, field ion microscopes, field emission
microscopes, storage rings for particle accelerators, specialized space simulator
experiments, and clean-surface studies.
Today, the lowest achieved vacuum level (on Earth) is 10 -13 Torr and scientists continue
to explore the field of vacuum technology and vacuum science, and make innovative
discoveries.
References

1. The History of Vacuum Science and Vacuum Technology: Pioneers of the 20th
Century, Paul A. Redhead (Ed.), John Wiley & Sons, 1994.
2. A Short History of Vacuum Terminology and Technology, McAllister Technical
Services (www.mcallister.com)
3. Redhead, P. A., History of Vacuum Devices, National Research Council, Ottawa
Canada.
4. Dylla, H. F., Introduction to Vacuum Science and Technology, CERN Conference
Presentation, May 2006.
5. Ormrod, Stephen and Nigel Schofield, Current and future trends in vacuum process
technology, Solid State Technology, 2009.