Document drying has become a growing business because of the vast amount of time, energy, and money it can cost a victim to try and get their wet documents replaced and sometimes it is not always possible. Doctor and law offices or industries can have thousands of pages of paper records that get wet and damaged and it is too time consuming to reproduce individually.
When these kinds of businesses send their paperwork to be saved, it can be a tedious process, depending on the type of material being rescued. For paper records, they are usually frozen as quickly as possible. You might wonder why they would do such a thing, but actually it is to stop biological contamination which can cause mold and mildew. It will also stop the swelling of the fibers and the bleeding of ink. The faster these paper products are frozen after a wet disaster, the better condition they are likely to be in when the restoration process is finished.
Freeze drying can take several months to accomplish. The length of time will ultimately rest with how wet the paperwork was originally and the freezer temperature. Books can be dried this way as well. Paperwork such as office records could be spread out to dry. If can be left in the file boxes, but this will take months to complete the drying process.
For large amounts of record materials, vacuum drying can be used. The materials are placed in a vacuum thermal drying chamber while they are wet or frozen. This method can be more cost effective for large quantities of items, but sometimes distortion can be a problem. This method is not always a good choice for books. Vacuum freeze drying is a slightly different method. A low pressure vacuum chamber is used for smaller batches of materials and the materials remain frozen until they are dry. Ice crystals will vaporize without thawing. This means the materials will not undergo any additional swelling or distortion other than what their original condition was when placed in the chamber.
Air drying is often used too. It requires no special equipment and works for materials only slightly damp or wet. It takes a lot of work to dry materials this way. They must be monitored to prevent mold growth and the results are not always as good because of distortion. It does not work well for bound, coated material.
One method that has been used for years is dehumidifying and desiccant drying. Commercial dehumidifiers might be placed at the business site and left in place to dry the records or other materials where they were damaged. Temperature, air velocity, and humidity are controlled in the area. This is ideal when large numbers of records and other materials need to be dried on site rather than being packed up and moved to a facility, although it is sometimes necessary.
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