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 and charcoal are chemically the same. They’re almost entirely carbon. The difference is that “Activated” charcoal is charcoal that has been made to be physically porous like a sponge. This greatly increases the surface area.
One of charcoal’s more useful properties is that it’s good at adsorbing and trapping other hydrocarbons. Since adsorption happens at a material surface, more surface area = more adsorption.
>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.
Without questioning *why* you want to do this, I assume for science, I think the best way would be through [chemical activation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activated_carbon#Production).
Looks like basic DIY activated charcoal uses calcium chloride solution to activate the charcoal.
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Literally it’s just powdered charcoal, the “activated” thing is advertising nonsense. Powdered charcoal has many more surface areas that can work to clean things than larger chunks do. Think of a broom having a lot of bristles versus just a few for sweeping, so to speak.
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Tl;Dr, no you can’t use the stuff in your fireplace to make activated charcoal, and it would take quite a lot of effort to make it on your own.
A lot of people in these comments are conflating charcoal and activated charcoal. Charcoal is made by taking biomass, usually wood, and super heating it in a way that starves it of oxygen to drive off everything except the carbon. What is left is charcoal, a lightweight carbon skeleton of the wood that was there before. It’s porous, but not nearly as porous as activated charcoal.
In order to make activated charcoal, it needs way more surface area. Waaaaay more. A quick look at Wikipedia, charcoal has a surface area of 2-5m^2 /gram, where as activated charcoal has 3,000 m^2 /gram.
Making the charcoal to begin with is kind of a hassle, unless you routinely need a lot of it. Then making it porous enough to be “activated” is also going to require a lot of work. Unless it’s a fun thing you want to do or you need to have truly mind boggling quantities of it, it’s almost certainly cheaper and easier to buy it premade.
My final year of school required a study to be made, I did mine on activated carbon.
I found that you don’t necessarily get ‘better’ activated charcoal, but that different ones are suited for different tasks.
Depending on the matter used as substrate, and the production method, you will end up with different sized pores in the final product. This changes how the charcoal interacts with different sized molecules.
Activated charcoal, sometimes referred to as activated carbon, is a special form of charcoal that has been processed to have very small, low-volume pores. These pores increase the surface area of the charcoal, allowing it to “trap” or adsorb more substances, such as chemicals or toxins. This is why activated charcoal is often used in water and air filters, in medical treatments for poisoning, and in various other applications where it’s important to remove or reduce certain substances.
So how do we make charcoal “activated”? The process generally involves two main steps:
Burning: First, you need to make regular charcoal. This is done by burning a source of carbon, like wood or coconut shells, in a low-oxygen environment. This process removes water, gases, and other substances, leaving mostly pure carbon behind in the form of charcoal.
Activation: The next step is to “activate” the charcoal. This is typically done by heating the charcoal to a very high temperature in the presence of a gas like steam or carbon dioxide. This process erodes the internal structure of the charcoal, creating lots of tiny pores. These pores greatly increase the surface area of the charcoal, making it more effective at trapping other substances.
To give you a sense of how much the surface area increases, one gram of activated charcoal can have a surface area of 3,000 square meters or more. That’s about the same area as two FIFA-standard football fields!
In contrast, regular charcoal hasn’t gone through the activation process, so it doesn’t have as many pores and can’t absorb as much. Regular charcoal is still useful for things like cooking and heating, where its ability to burn for a long time and produce steady heat is more important than its adsorption capacity.
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First you make charcoal, and then you call the Megazord to activate it.
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