It was just my impression that with an overspill bottle, I could safely use the jar attachment and then the bag sealer could be used separately.
After all, isn't the point that it removes air?
Perhaps I am unfamiliar with the inner workings of the vacuum sealer.
Pen, Don't make this complicated. I've worked quite a bit with mechanical oil pumps and some with mercury diffusion pumps on high vacuum lines (better than a millionth of a millimeter of mercury vacuum). The following applies no matter how the pump operates.
1) The pump will remove ANYTHING that is volatile, and anything small enough to be floating in the air it pumps. If you can smell it will go through the pump. (Remember, vacuum means absence of everything, not just air.)
2) The better the vacuum, the more volatile just about anything becomes. Acetone will boil violently under dynamic vacuum from most any kind of pump--and pass into the pump as vapor i.e. like "air". It's very easy to boil water at room temperature under vacuum. With a good enough system you can vaporize substances with surprizingly high boiling points.
3) When lots of fast evaporation occurs, the container gets cold. Pretty much the same effect as using a spray can and having the compressed liquid volatilize when leaving the nozzle, and chilling. Liquids with moderate freezing points will solidify from this cold, but vapor will still leave the surface..."freeze-drying"
4) The only way to keep the volatized materials from passing through the vacuum pump is to cryogenically trap them. Like the "overspill bottle" idea, except cooled by a dry-ice/alcohol slush. Or even liquid nitrogen is used. Just make sure the design directs the vapor stream to the bottom of the recepticle, so freezes there, instead of in the inlet or outlet tube. The idea is to get so cold that most anything except things that are gases under normal conditions will liquify or freeze there, and they can't volatilize even under the vacuum. Result--pump and you protected, plus higher vacuum.
***Don't use liquid nitrogen unless you really know what you're doing though!! Oxygen liquifies a slightly higher temp than nitrogen, and it can build up as a liquid in an improperly used trap, or a system with a leak. Raise the temp a very few degrees and it goes back to a gas--Boom! Also a severe combustion hazzard--How better to get a very nasty fire than pure oxygen? Think rocket engine. The trap is essentially a closed system--much different than an dewar designed to handle cryogenic gases!!***
Cold trapping will keep the nastly stuff out of the pump, where it can eat seals, cause corrosion, and in the case of oil pumps, all of the above and greatly reduce achievable vaccum by condensing and vaporizing in and out of the expensive, special non-volatile vacuum oil. Plus it keeps you from breathing that same nasty stuff. Remember, if it was liquid at room temp and pressure, it will likely want to condense again under those conditions--like inside your pump, or at the pump exhaust. And if it evaporates readily, you'll be breathing it.
Acetone is pretty low boiling, I'd use something higher boiling as a thinner for vacuum use--better no thinner. Rembember, you can't get a good vacuum until all the volatile stuff is pumped out. But if you pump down, then add something thinned with volatile solvent it boils off a vapor--vacuum instantly and greatly reduced because of the vapor pressure of the solvent.
Keep the pump on, all the solvent will get pumped off--no thinner left. seal the pump off, the solvent vapor pressure will fill the container--vacuum essentially gone, you just have acetone vapor where the air was. A compromise is needed here--too volatile always crappy vacuum, quite non volatile--will never leave, or needs a long time under vacuum and heat to remove. (Come to think of it, zillions of tiny pockets of acetone sealed in an epoxy/wood matrix doesn't sound that great anyway). I'd go with the best vacuum I could get and the least viscous sealant and no volatile thinners.
I just thought that if you could use it (the bag sealer) with raw meat, then that must mean that no "microbes/etc." were passed into the machine. Otherwise they would warn against it because it would contaminate all future sealings.
Not unless there is a filter--which would have to be changed regularly, and would be a probably more hazardous source of now-concentrated microbes. I suspect that the whole thing is that there is no flow from the pump to the food in normal use, the pump can't support microbe growth, and it is assumed that one will not vacuum seal "food" that contains pathogens. Anyway, most sanitation involves minimizing numbers of microbes, and preventing any growth-- not sterilizing or removing ALL of them.
Me, I wouldn't use the same pump for food and stabilizing. Sorry for the length, I can't be bothered to edit for succintness.
