About Activated Carbon

Activated carbon is a common substance used in water treatment. Home use water filtration system or industry use water treatment plant also consist of activated carbon.

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Categories of Activated Carbon

There are many organic substances found in nature can be processed and converted to activated carbon. To your surprise, I have seen some activated carbon which made from durian shell. Of course, this is mainly for engineering developing purpose. In common, we know that there are 4 main type of activated carbon substance in Malaysia, namely

1. Coconut shell base
2. Palm shell base
3. Coal base
4. Peat base

Among these 4 categories, activated carbon made from coconut shell base and palm kernel shell base is highly demanded due to better quality. This is because both shells are given a better absorption rate as well as product hardness. Malaysia does manufacturing both activated carbon, and the products mostly for export purpose.

Coal-based activated carbon is the common categories found in Malaysia. Malaysia is not a country supplying coal, hence, most of the coal base activated carbon are imported from overseas, especially China.

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Powder or Granular Form Activated Carbon

Many has come across the question whether what they want to use Granular or Powder form of activated carbon. Again, there is no absolute answer for this question, it is very much depend on the filtration purpose.

In general, granular activated carbon is the most popular and commonly seen in many applications. Especially the mesh size 8*30 is hot sell product. Many water treatment plant use this type of granular activated carbon.

The powder form is less wanted now in the market. This doesn’t mean powder activated carbon has no market. The function for powder form activated carbon has been replaced by the water treatment process. Chemical removal and biological removal methodology are showing remarkable improvement. Many impurities which originally removed by powder type activated carbon has been replaced by chemical and biological removal.

When to use Activated Carbon

The main purpose for activated carbon is to remove tiny impurity which unable to filter via mechanical filter methodology. The porous structure on activated carbon is given the nature for impurity absorption. The absorption capability is very much illustrated by the iodine value of the activated carbon.

Eventhough activated carbon has the best absorption value as compare to other substance, however, in a filtration system, we always apply the activated carbon cartridge at the last station in order for very tiny impurity removal. Those larger size impurity should be removed by filter cartridge and filter bag.