I’m trying to see if I can make my own activated charcoal diy, from bonfire charcoal and if it is equally as good as the purchased activated charcoal.
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The word “activated” means very little in this case. The difference is physical, activated charcoal is physically more porous and thus less dense (no chemical difference, just Carbon). It’s like fluffed out charcoal versus typical charcoal that presses under gravity well slowly burning layer by layer (like in a camp fire). Other things like oxygen affect how it burns too, as oxygen makes gases like CO2 through combustion. You don’t actually want combustion but rather left over carbon. To make it in industry they heat wood without oxygen to change it’s carbons physical state to charcoal.
Your best bet is scraping charcoal off a log (hardwood from the heart of hot fire, so it heated up in a spot oxygen was consumed before reaching) so it’s a fine powder, adding some calcium chloride solution (in water) to make a slurry. Spread it out over some cloth and bake it dry at like 250C in the oven. That will basically be activated charcoal.
So charcoal is like a chunk of foam, and activated charcoal is like a sponge.
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