Someacdude
Active Member
There ya go, nitrogen works best, we actually use a refrigerant to break the vac, it drags it down much faster.THC boils at 17C/62.6F under 100 microns vacuum, so we stay above 29.5" Hg (10,000 microns), and don't need our micron gauge. THC boils at 76C/168.8F under that partial pressure.
Got a left over bottle of N2 from our defunct Perkins Elmer GC that we continue to pay demurrage on, so I'll give it a shot to speed up dessication. We used <5 ppm water content argon in industry as a drying agent, so it should work..
Whats happens is as you bring the space back to a positive it excites any noncondensables and they are easier to pull out.
I did a demonstration for my students at school.
We took a inch and 3/8 piece of copper tubing.
Put a fitting on it about a foot in on one side.
Taped mylar to one end , loaded it with a ping pong ball and and taped the other end with mylar.
Pulled a vacuum and pierced the side closest to the ping pong ball.
We actually shot a ping pong ball through a full beer can.