Dense, hard carbon made from coconut shell char, almost entirely fine micropores. The grade for trace-level polishing, drinking water and precious metal recovery.
Small molecules, low concentrations, and a long service life.
Coconut shell has a fine, even cell structure, and activation keeps that geometry intact. The result is a pore population concentrated below two nanometres, small enough that the walls on either side both pull on the molecule at once — holding it far more strongly than a wider pore can. At trace concentrations, that grip is the whole mechanism, which is why shell carbon keeps working at outlet levels where a wider-pored carbon has already given up.
1,000–1,150
mg/g Iodine
Typical iodine number for steam-activated shell grades.
The shell sets the pore geometry; activation and washing set the grade.
Shell char is bought to a fixed spec for carbon content, ash and volatile matter, and checked on arrival. Mixed or contaminated char cannot be fixed later in the process.
Char is activated in a furnace under controlled steam and heat, building up micropore volume. Burn-off is kept tight so density is not lost.
Where needed, the carbon is acid-washed and rinsed, then dried. This step is what separates a food-grade lot from an industrial one.
The carbon is screened to the ordered size, de-dusted, and packed with a certificate covering iodine number, hardness, ash, moisture and screen size.
One base carbon, finished three ways for three kinds of contact.
Steam activated · 6x12 to 12x40
The standard fixed-bed product. High iodine number, high hardness and low ash make it the default choice for drinking-water polishing and point-of-entry beds.
Milled · 200 and 325 mesh
Finely milled shell carbon for batch dosing, where fast uptake from a small particle matters more than recovering the carbon afterwards.
Mineral-acid washed · low ash
The same base carbon with soluble minerals washed out, for duties where any leaching or pH shift in the treated stream is unacceptable.
What each property actually governs once the bed is running.
Reflects the micropore volume this carbon is bought for, and the single figure most closely tied to how well it handles trace-level contaminants.
Keeps the bed intact through years of backwash, and keeps adsorbed metal inside a leach circuit rather than lost as fine dust.
Naturally low, and lower again after acid washing. It governs what leaches into the treated stream and any pH shift at start-up.
The measure of vapour-phase capacity. Where the duty is solvent or hydrocarbon vapour, this figure matters more than the iodine number.
Higher than a coal granule, so a vessel of a given size holds more carbon and runs longer between changeouts.
Controls how much of the delivered weight is actually water. Matters in vapour-phase duty, where a wet bed loses working capacity.
Three things come together: very high micropore volume for trace organics and taste-and-odour compounds, very low ash so little leaches into the finished water, and very high hardness so the bed sheds little fine dust over a long life. That combination is hard to match with any other feedstock.
It washes out soluble minerals left from the shell, lowering ash and leachables, and stopping the pH shift a fresh unwashed bed can cause at start-up. It is used for food, beverage, pharmaceutical and ultrapure water duty.
Usually not the first choice. Colour bodies are large molecules that need the wider mesopores coal-based carbon has. Where both trace organics and colour are present, the two carbons are often used one after the other rather than compromising on one grade.
It is the industry standard for gold recovery circuits, because its hardness limits losses in an abrasive slurry and its pore structure suits the gold cyanide compound being recovered. Abrasion resistance is specified alongside activity for this duty.
Shell char is an agricultural by-product, so quality varies by origin and season. That is exactly why it is bought to a fixed carbon-content and ash spec and checked on arrival, rather than accepted on description alone.
Send us your stream analysis, target outlet level and the compliance your site needs. We will come back with the grade, bed size and changeout interval.
