I have been having trouble with my humidor keeping humidity. My cigars have seemed dry lately. I replaced the battery on my hygrometer and salt tested it. It was accurate. I'm not perilously dry, 61%, but I would prefer a little moister. I looked at my beads today and a good deal of them are yellowed. I've had them a little over a year.

I'm thinking this is ammonia that has evaporated. Any thoughts? Should I just bug Scooter for more beads?
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I think it is the oils from the cigars that turn the beads yellow. I don't know how much it affects their buffering capacity. Mine still are working well.
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Matt, To my understanding the discoloration is from the beads absorbing the oils and other impurities in the air. From an old post Mark said this should not affect their performance. After a year mine in my desktop are starting to yellow a bit, but the ones in the vinotemps are still white. :-)
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Quite a bit of my beads are yellow, they work just fine.
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Stop peeing on them :-)

I wonder why bobarian's Vino beads are white while the humi's are yellow..... Mine in the Vino are white but I've only had the setup for a month and a half.
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Did you buy them in Asia?
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Damn, you beat me to it! :-)

~Vitis
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:-) Not cool.
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sorry, didn't mean to hurt anybody's feelings. Can any of the mods please delete my remark?
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I would guess because there is a lot more free air in the vino so it will take longer to turn. Also, the boxes probably absorb some of the impurities. :-)
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A small shot glass with distilled water in the humi will help give it a boost. I have found that if I run a marginal amout of beads it is harder to keep a steady rh in the coolador and humi. I now go heavy with beads over the recommended amount for the size I need I am trying to keep.
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mine are yellow and seem to work fine, ive had them for little over a year now.
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:-)

Mine are yellow and they have been working well for almost 3 years. :-)
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I don't think anyone's feelings were hurt, Ferdinand. I think the racial overtones, however unintentional, were what prompted the reaction.
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Whoa! </keanu> I was just googling this because I saw my beads and started freaking out about them.
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Free hydrocarbons get stuck on the walls of the bead's tunnels.
Eventually the beads will be plugged to an extent where it'll affect performance.
I don't at all mean to be contrary, but I can't imagine Mark said it doesn't hurt the bead's performance because it does. I think it's a misunderstanding.
It's gradual and minimal at the beginning though. As years pass it obviously decreases the bead's performance even moreso.
I imagine he said "the beads will still work". That's completely true. Just like when the beads turn to crumbles, they still retain their properties, they just don't transfer moisture as well because of their shape and loss of surface area and airspace between beads.
The silica beads have big pores ranging from 10-400 angstroms wide, and they're not uniform. Depending on the size of the hydrocarbons floating around in the humi they may or may not be able to get in there and stick.
HCM beads have pores that are 4 angstroms wide and uniform. That keeps stuff from getting in and sticking. The hydrocarbons just don't fit.
That's why they don't change color.
If the HCM beads ever get grossed up for some reason they can be steam cleaned or boiled back to newness.

Mattster, pm me with your humi dimensions and I'll send ya some HCM beads to replace the HCS beads so you can compare them. I'll trade ya for some coffee!!! w00t!!! :-)
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**** there's coffee coming your way already. Not nearly equal value but cool. I'll wait till ya tell me what you think to send more though. I got a few different kinds.
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Put shilala's HCM beads in this morning. Here we go.
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I hit Matt up for more coffee, too. :-)
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Can you do that with silica beads or just HCM? If not, what's special about HCM that allows them to be cleaned up?

I deal with carbon filters at work and we're usually looking at SO2 as the primary environmental contaminant. Let's assume for a minute that my humidor is sitting in a similar atmosphere, would either the silica or HCM adsorb the SO2? May not be applicable to a home humidor, but I'm curious :-)
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