Question about autoclaving and drying - (Jan/19/2008 )

Hey - I recently autoclaved some eppendorf tubes, which I placed inside those autoclaving pouches (blue plastic, white paper on the other side). After autoclaving finished (8 min sterilize, 40min dry), the bag was still wet, and the contents of the bag were still wet. Should I reautoclave the bag, or should i transfer them to a new bag an reautoclave, or do you think it is okay?

Thank you,
- Eli

You have to dry them after autoclaving. We dry stuff at 60C

I use one of the two approaches: 1) if you are working on the weekend and no one else is using the autoclave, I open the door about 2 inches and let it dry it off overnight. 2) Most time we put it wet items in 37 C warm room for 24 hrs.

Well, the autoclave has three shelves, and it seemed like only the item on the lower shelf was completely dry. The other two items have already dried by leaving them in open air. I want to know if this will affect sterility in any way. I'll remember to increase the drying time next time.

@genehunter - wow, there's something called a warm room? Is this like a cold room?

we have a drier shelf (it is as big as a refrigerator) only for drying autoclaved stuff, we set the temperature of that drier at 65c.
and when this drier is full, we sometimes use the baking machine (and set the temperature at 65c)

we always have an drying oven to dry things up after autoclave... we transfer duran bottles, tubes in autoclave pouch/bags... etc... after autoclave and collect them the next day.

Okay, thanks. So it looks like being wet after autoclaving isn't a bad thing, then. I'll just dry things manually if it is still wet after autoclaving.