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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Activated charcoal is physically different from normal one. It has lots and lots of pores. It means that for a unit of volume it has lots and lots of area, which offer lots and lots of potential points, where chemical or physical reactions can take place.
In industry it is made by carbonisation (heating carbon-rich material in about 600 C degrees in inert atmosphere – complete lack of oxygen) followed with activisation (treating with for example steam in 900 C degrees).
Activated charcoal contains many tiny pores which will trap molecules of a certain size while not affecting smaller molecules. It is made by subjecting charcoal to high temperature steam which breaks down the charred remains of the cells in the wood leaving tiny pores behind. There are various guides showing you how to make activated charcoal at home. The results is generally not as good as the industrial made activated charcoal as you have less control on the size of the pores and generally make less pores then the commercial stuff. But it is certainly possible.
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The short answer is no, That your charcoal and activated charcoal are as similar as a redwood and a piece of paper.Both made of wood, but lots of work to get to the other version.
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.
[This is a blown up picture of porous material.](https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/background-texture-of-porous-material-gm1163909040-319754656)
Although it’s not necessarily “activated charcoal” (I found it searching for “pumice stone close up pics”) it gives you an idea of how much more surface area is involved on the microscopic level when dealing with these “porous materials”.
A small amount of this stuff can have the surface area (on a 2D level) of a doubles tennis court.
“Activated” is just a marketing term that means “more surface area”. More surface area is important in chemicals, because it allows for those reactions to take place quicker/more fully. There’s some easy ways to accomplish this. Obviously the finer the powder you can grind it into, the more surface area it will have. One more advanced technique is to give the fine particles an awkward geometry. This can be done with advanced milling equipment.
Eating a little bit of charcoal has a couple of benefits. It helps with flatulence and bloating. And in this situation “activated” charcoal would work faster/better than eating a lump of bonfire charcoal.
Also, I just want to point out that you SHOULD NOT eat bonfire charcoal. Especially out of the bag. That stuff is soaked in accelerant and other chemicals to make it burn better. That stuff will make you very sick.
It’s heat treated with steam which causes it to kinda puff up similar to popcorn, which gives it more surface area to ‘catch’ stuff.
activated charcoal is special because it has *way* more surface area for chemical stuff to happen. think of melting an ice-cube vs crushed ice. more area, more reaction.
to make charcoal, take wood, trap it in a low/no oxygen environment, and heat it intensely (with some way for gasses to escape)
this creates (mostly) carbon. the problem is that this carbon is in the shape of wood. you can go buy real-wood charcoal. it’s charcoal and you can still see the planks of wood it’s made from. complete with the smooth surfaces where the wood was saw-cut. we want more surface area than that. so you pump a bunch of super-heated steam through it. the steam cleans the carbon, taking away the other stuff in wood that’s still left behind.
carbon doesn’t usually dissolve in water, but with enough heat you can get a little bit to go. and that’s what we want. the super heated steam scratches a little tiny bit of the carbon away, breaking up the smooth surface from the wood and making the pores inside a bit bigger. more surface area.
Is there a difference with activated charcoal made from wood vs coconut shell?
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