Water Purifiers And Activated Carbon: Adsorb Or Adsorb?

Water has been purified with activated carbon for hundreds of years stretching back to ancient India. Most of us have seen activated carbon for sale in pet stores for cleaning water and have used a crude cousin, charcoal, to cook steaks in the backyard.

As a refined version of charcoal, activated carbon is made by super heating organic material like wood or coconut shells. This super heating drives out impurities and causes the surface area of the resulting material to become tremendous. It is this large surface area that allows this substance to be used to clean water.

For years the process of cleaning water with activated carbon in water purifiers was referred to as absorption. This term refers to what a sponge does with water and it is easy to visualize the activated carbon acting like a sponge, soaking up contaminants. However, this is not actually how the process works. The molecules inside the activated carbon are passive because they are connected to other molecules around their entire perimeter. The molecules on the surface are not as