What is Activated Charcoal?
Charcoal is carbon. Activated charcoal has been treated with oxygen to open up millions of tiny pores between the carbon atoms.
The Encyclopedia Britannica states that the use of special manufacturing techniques result in highly porous charcoals, that have surface areas of 300-2,000 sq. meters per gram. These so-called active, or activated charcoals are widely used to adsorb odorous or colored substances from gases or liquids.
The word adsorb is important. When a material adsorbs something, it attaches to it by chemical attraction. The huge surface area of activated charcoal gives it countless bonding sites. When certain chemicals are trying to pass, they attach to the surface and are trapped.
Activated charcoal is good at trapping other carbon-based impurities (”organic” chemicals) from water, as well as things like chlorine. This is the reason these types of filters are so commonly used in water filters and water filter products. Many other chemicals are not attracted to carbon at all - sodium, nitrates, etc… so they pass right through. This means that an activated charcoal filter is especially important because it will remove certain impurities that can be harmful to us. It also means that, once all of the bonding sites are filled, an activated charcoal filter stops working. At that point you must replace the filter.
