Activated Carbon

Basics

• Any form of high purity elemental carbon processed to have high porosity
• Used as a more efficient/dense chemical filter/reactor compared to standard carbon sources such as charcoal
• Can be produced by high temperatures, medium temperatures and steam, or chemicals
• Made with Calcium Chloride - [1]
• Source material is usually charred wood (charcoal) or some form of coal (coke or raw coal)
• We will be dealing with charcoal so most work is documented on Activated Charcoal

OSE Work

• Based of this and other research
  • Open Source Fixed Bed Activated Carbon Filter
  • Open Source Fluidized Bed Activated Carbon Filter
• Use in Bioreactors , Anerobic Digesters , WWT , and PBRs as a high surface area additive for aiding sludge / biofilm development
• Use in chemical reactors, and in Fluidized Bed Reactors
• Can it replace Zeolite in applications where carbon is of no isse (granted out that may leave out most reactions...)
  • On a side note Metal Sputtering etc may "seal" the carbon off effectively?
• Use as enhanced Biochar

Re-Use/Recycling

• The main issue is how it can absorb and be saturated pre use
  • Esentially meaning it is "regular" carbon/charcoal on arrival, and thus inefficient (bad in casual use, may mess up equipment, or cause more pollution in serious use)
• Also eventually it will need to be swapped out and/or regenerated
• Thus to close the Product Ecology we need to plot this out
• Relevant Section of the Wikipedia Page

Methods

• Thermal
• Liquid Chemical Washing
  • A company that does this with water and ozone

Disposal via Use in Other Applications

• Can be used for Tera Preta / Biochar
• Can be used as a Biofuel (similar to Charcoal , Charcoal Pellets , or Charcoal Dust
• GRANTED this may require washing of absorbed pollutants etc?

Reactivation

• This is the preffered option, as it saves transport of new material in, although some methods may be heat/electricity intensive (commercial vs home needs etc need to be evaluated)
• It can be device integrated, a seperate onsite device, or at a seperate dedicated facility

Device Integrated

• The preffered option for medium scale (not home use, but not massive industry, thus most of ose?)
• Thermal Reactivation Seems to be the Best Option?
• Can be done with waste heat, or electric heat (induction even if a metal container is used)
• Need to research temps needed, and gasses in/out
• The optimal setup for this would be similar to PSA in that it would need to have at least 2 devices, for uninterupted use
• Similar to a RTO as heat recovery may be reusable thus improving efficiency

Onsite Device

• A Scaled down version of a dedicated facility's equipment
• Most likely would be industrial furnaces/dryers etc

Seperate Dedicated Facility

• • Most likely would be large industrial furnaces/dryers etc

Internal Links

• Activated Charcoal
• Activated Carbon Production Workflow

External Links

• Wikipedia Page on Activated Carbon
• A Paper on Using it for Desorbtion Refrigeration
• A Paper on Fluidized vs Fixed Bed Activated Carbon VOC Scrubbers
• A Paper on use of Fluidized Activated Carbon in a WWT Bioreactor ?