I usually start off with a very small, slow fire, as can be seen here. Once I get the pan heated up (with the silica gel already in the pan), I will monitor and stir the content in a slow circular manner. Of course, you could stir in any manner that you want - so long as you keep that hand of yours moving.
This picture shows the original state of the silica gels. Actually, there are all brands and type of silica gels here, from all sources. That is why you can see that the content is sort of multi-coloured. The wooden spatula was a gift as well. I found that cutting off the mid portion of the base allows for easier gel movement.
Here is the same lot of gels, just about 25 minutes later. One interesting fact that I found out is that the longer you keep the gels in the hot pan (try not to melt them), the better the absorbent power the gels provide.
From what I know, silica gels (a synthetic form of sodium silicate) by themselves are harmless. The blue indicator chemical, supposedly Cobalt (II) chloride, may not be so harmless. In fact, it is deemed as carcinogenic. Now, that puts me a bit on the worrying side.
I did some searches on the internet and everyone else is promoting the re-cycling aspect with the cautionary side note on beware-of-small-beads-choking thing. Poison seems to be a non-topic. Nevertheless, there are some mentioning of poisonous stuff at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silica_gel].
For the moment, to ensure that I do not breathe in fine silica dust - due to all the stirring and heating, I have started putting on surgical mask when doing the slow frying of the gels. Will this help? I hope it does.
Here is a macro view of a wet silica gel!
