charcoal and carbon

[NOKUY]

I'm putting together a "carbon scrubber", and in doing some research I am finding some scrubbers refer to charcoal and not to carbon.

I already know that I will be buying "activated carbon" for mine, but am a bit confused as to the difference between the ones advertised as "charcoal filters" and the ones advertised as "carbon scrubbers".

please enlighten me

(I understand them to be essentially the same thing)

thanks
-yukon

 

[Deft]

I think the "lab quality acitvated carbon" stuff isnt made from just half burnt wood but I could be wrong, I looked into it for a minute a few days ago but didnt see anything realy on how it is made or how it is structuraly on a microscopic level. Interested too in this if anyone knows or has links to some info.

 

[jcsmooth]

Isn't charcoal made up of carbon atoms (plus some impurities I assume).

The activated carbon you buy for aquariums and for our scrubbers is not burnt wood. You can make it from a variety of sources but coconut shell is quite popular.

I haven't done any reading on it in a while but these are just some general concepts to get you started.

JC

 

[Ganja Guerilla]

As I understand it activated or active carbon is created by subjecting the material to high heat ~900 deg-C in an inert gas environment such as argon or nitrogen. Activated carbon has an immense surface area in the order of 400m² per 1 gram of material, a tennis court is about 260m² by comparison.

Charcoal on the other hand is also subjected to heat but in the presence of oxygen and lacks the surface area created in the activated carbon process.

Hope this helps
GG

 

[Deft]

I thought charcoal was made similarly in that it was just a regular fire but then it got buried or somthing to douse the flames and the coals were left as the charcoal? I saw a sience show once where they made a filter for water out of a bunch of charcoal from a fire but it didnt work as well as I thought it might.

Interesting, but either way where is the best place to get the kind of activated carbon you want to make an air filter out of? I know theres stuff in the fish section of petco and stores like that but its expensive it seems and you would need to buy a lot of it.

 

[Ganja Guerilla]

Interesting, but either way where is the best place to get the kind of activated carbon you want to make an air filter out of? I know theres stuff in the fish section of petco and stores like that but its expensive it seems and you would need to buy a lot of it.

eBay... this was posted in another thread, $1.00 a lb for activated carbon... pretty cheap compared to what you get in a pet store.

 

[jcsmooth]

I tried purchasing from iroc one time but the guy unfortunately wouldn't mail it to Canada (customs issues). He did however seem like a genuine and nice seller.
On the other hand I did have success with http://stores.ebay.com/Carbon-Eze
Best price you'll find hands down. The sell was a perfect transaction.

Good luck,
JC