Activated Carbon Online

better water by using powder activated carbon.

‘THE Times’, published on www.mywebtimes.com has a news item about how the Streator district will have better quality of water, thanks to use of powder activated carbon. Mr. David Clifton operation superintendent of the district has claimed that installation of activated carbon filter will guarantee supply of pure water.

When we think of carbon we think of black powder that makes everything dirty. It is not surprising if one wonders how such carbon can be useful for cleaning water.

The activated carbon filter used for purifying water contain granular activated carbon, which is prepared from vegetative sources mainly coconut husk. The process of activating carbon makes carbon highly porous increasing its surface area. This carbon has unique property of adsorbing substances on its surface. This property of activated carbon adsorption help in removing impurities from anything that passes over the surface of this carbon. The individual particle of carbon is very fine making huge surface area available of adsorption. The small quantity of this fine powder can have surface area more than a football field. The unwanted substances like algae, suspended particles and micro-organisms are effectively removed by powder activated carbon.

This property of activated carbon is also used in activated carbon air filters and household water filters. One can get activated carbon water filters from shops and one can also assemble those at home too. These carbon water filters are easy to assemble and maintain and can give pure water at very low or near zero running cost.

Better alternative for powder activated carbon

Technology is making advances day by day. Powder activated carbon is a content which has been used for drinking water treatment till now and is quite expensive way of treatment. It is very important for us to make the water we drink very pure and of good quality because human lives are very important and the drinking water should be safe to for us. Activated carbon filtering follows the adsorption method to make water pure for drinking by removing impure particles and other contaminating materials. Activated carbon is supposed to have very high surface area and hence helps the adsorption process and many waste water treatment plants all over the world use powder activated carbon for their water purification. But now another material called Aerogel, has come into picture and is supposed to have the highest surface area till now and is also the lightest known solid available today. It has many good properties one of which is that , it is the best electrical, thermal and sound insulator. It can easily break and can be very easily made into powder. It is also very durable material known today. Scientists now think that aerogel is the material which could be a better alternative to activated carbon as it is cheaper than the activated carbon and the water filtration can be made less expensive by using this material. So, why not use a material which has similar properties and which also not too expensive to treat our drinking water and make our lives safer.