Clearing The Air With Activated Carbon

Think you know activated carbon? The range of capabilities is so robust that operators of all types — drinking water, wastewater, municipal, or industrial — should come to fully understand its usage.

Jim Knepper, VP of sales and marketing with Jacobi Carbons, the world’s largest manufacturer of coconut shell activated carbon, covers the bases in this talk with Todd and Todd of Water Online Radio.

Although coconut shell activated carbon may sound simple, Knepper notes the importance of fine-tuning the media to fit specific applications.

“We can narrow it down to what you're actually trying to treat — whether it’s a variety of compounds or one specific compound. If it’s just an H2S compound, hydrogen sulfide, you [can] remove that with either a catalytic carbon or an impregnated carbon. If it’s a soup of organic constituents from a wastewater plant, those might be better suited to a non-impregnated, non-catalytic, coconut shell-type carbon. It really depends on the application. When we don't ask the right questions … what you wind up doing is throwing a product out there that you think will fix all the issues.”

There is no single, fix-all solution, says Knepper, but activated carbon can be tailored to solve many different problems. It can be manufactured from coconut, coal, lignite, and various other sources, and is available in powder, granular, or pelletized forms. It treats a variety of odiferous compounds, drinking water and wastewater contaminants, and even emerging micropollutants from pharmaceuticals and personal care products.

Learn more about activated carbon, in addition to Jacobi’s ion exchange resins, by clicking the Radio Player below.