Eli5… How does a box of baking soda absorb smells? Does the stuff buried at the bottom absorb smells? Is the box in your pantry for cooking… Absorbing smells?

Question

Eli5… How does a box of baking soda absorb smells? Does the stuff buried at the bottom absorb smells? Is the box in your pantry for cooking… Absorbing smells?

In: 17

Answer 1

Baking soda is rather poor at absorbing smells. Activated charcoal is exceptionally good.

Neither works well in a refrigerator simply because there is nothing moving air past the chemical so that it could absorb the smells. It’s a tiny box with an opening of a few square inches, usually against a back wall, that gets almost not air flow.

**tl;dr it doesn’t really work well. Chemically it’s not great, no real surface area, no real air flow past.**