The benefits of charcoal can not be all list, but the difficulty people are facing is, how to get or prepare activated pulverized charcoal. That is the reason for this post How to Make Activated Charcoal at Home.
What Is The Best Wood To Make Charcoal With
Activated charcoal also called activated carbon is dark or black porous carbon gotten by burning of hardwoods in the presence of reduced air or oxygen, hardwoods like coconut shell, eucalyptus pine, willow, etc, can be used for this purpose.
Difference Between Activated Charcoal And Charcoal
The difference between activated charcoal and the inactivated or ordinary charcoal is the heating process, an ordinary charcoal can be activated by heating it in the presence of little or reduced air or oxygen or by adding lemon juice or chemicals like calcium chloride.
The process of activating charcoal makes it more porous, that is the spacing of the carbon chain is expanded, making the charcoal more potent in the absorption and adsorption of gases and toxins.
How to Make Activated Charcoal at Home
As previously mentioned good-quality activated charcoal can only be derived from hardwoods, hardwoods like pine, willow trees, coconut shell, Eucalyptus, oak, just to mention but a few.
How to Make activated Charcoal at Home: Step One
Remove the bark of the hardwood then cut the hardwoods into smaller sizes, the reason for this is to enable the hardwood to catch fire easily and burn uniformly.
How to Make activated Charcoal at Home: Step Two
Make a hole on the earth, and stalk the hardwood together, better still, if you have a condemned metal pot or container it can be used to stalk the hardwood.
How to Make activated Charcoal at Home: Step Three
Start fire on the hardwood and cover with a metal or iron material. Leave very little perforation, vent or opening to enable the admittance of very little air, this makes the burning process very slow and without fire of flames. This burning process might take a couple of days to complete.
How to Make activated Charcoal at Home: Step Four
When burning must have been completed, leave the charcoal in the container or hole for some time in order to cool off, as the presence of air can set the pile ablaze if not allowed to cool off properly
How to Make activated Charcoal at Home: Step Five
For medical use, gather the charcoal pile, break it into coarse pieces then wash it very well, and sterilize the activated charcoal by heating in an oven or clay pot at the temperature of 20 to 30 degrees centigrade.
How to Make activated Charcoal at Home: Step Six
After the activated charcoal is sterilized, allow it to cool down and then pulverize it, grind it to become fine and store in an air tight container.
