Activated carbon

Activated carbon is an extremely versatile and powerful adsorbent. It can be used to control the vast majority of all the different molecules that pollute the air, and there are more than one hundred and thirty million catalogued chemicals! The most important characteristic of some activated carbons is "Broad Spectrum" adsorptive capacity. These carbons are able to adsorb a huge range of different molecules. This is a very important feature when the mix of chemicals is unknown, or variable, or perhaps too complex and expensive to analyse. For the relatively small number of molecules that cannot be controlled using Broad Spectrum media, there are surface-modified or "impregnated" carbons that are intended to specificially adsorb an individual molecule or family of molecules. Activated carbon can be made from different raw materials, in different qualities and different shapes and sizes. Adjusting these factors allow Camfil to optimise efficiency, lifetime and pressure loss for different customer applications. Depending on the applications, activated carbon operates with a physical adsorption, chemical adsorption or catalytic mechanism. In some cases more than one of the mechanisms might be important.