The present invention relates to a dehumidifying device and, more precisely, to a dehumidifying device suitable for being placed in containers, boxes, or objects which are intended to hold metallic or non-metallic, machined or raw materials.
Materials disposed inside containers have to be protected from moisture to prevent their deterioration due to rust or corrosion, or they may be damaged or marked in some way by the moisture.
According to the prior art, bags or sachets of porous material containing dehumidifying products which absorb moisture are placed inside the containers.
These sachets have the disadvantage that they may deteriorate, causing the material which has already absorbed the moisture to leak into the environment.
A dehumidifying device according to the preamble of independent claim 1 is known from
The object of the present invention is to provide a device which overcomes the above-mentioned disadvantages and which is easy to construct and inexpensive.
The present invention achieves the above-mentioned objects by means of a dehumidifying device having the characteristics specified in the appended claims.
Further characteristics and advantages of the present invention will become clear in the course of the following detailed description which is given purely by way of nonlimiting example with reference to the appended drawings, in which:
With reference to the drawings, a device according to the present invention is generally indicated 1; it comprises a receptacle 2 which may be, for example, of rectangular or circular shape or of any other shape, and contains a hygroscopic substance 4 which may or may not contain a gelling substance; the hygroscopic substance 4 can absorb moisture from the surrounding air.
A sheet or film 6 of material that is permeable to water vapour and is impermeable to liquids in the direction from the interior towards the exterior is welded to the receptacle 2, for example, by heat-sealing or ultrasound welding or equivalent systems, thus allowing moisture to enter the receptacle 2 where it is transformed into liquid and can no longer escape.
When a receptacle according to the invention is inserted in a container in which metallic or non-metallic products are present, the moisture which is present in the container comes into contact with the hygroscopic substance 4 contained in the receptacle 2 - by filtering through the water-vapour permeable sheet 6 as described above - and combines with the hygroscopic substance, forming a type of jelly which retains the water, thus dehumidifying the atmosphere and, by virtue of the material of which the receptacle is made (that is, plastics material or in any case plastics-type material), the moisture can no longer escape.
The sheet 6 heat-sealed onto the receptacle 2 is formed, for example, by a flexible, microporous, polythene-coated film.
Naturally, the principle of the invention remaining the same, wide variations may be applied to the embodiments described and illustrated without thereby departing from the scope of the present invention; for example, the receptacle may be of any shape and the hygroscopic substance may contain gelling materials.
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