Fine-milled carbon dosed straight into the process. Suited to short contact times, loads that come and go, and sites with no vessel to hold a bed.
A problem that comes and goes does not justify a permanent installation.
A granular bed is a capital investment sized for a steady load, and it sits idle when the load is seasonal. Powdered carbon flips that: nothing is installed, the dose is set to match the water on the day, raised for a taste-and-odour event and stopped once it passes. The trade-off is that the carbon is used once and leaves with the sludge, so it only makes economic sense if you don't need it too often.
15–45
µm mean particle size
Standard milled cuts, from the finest polishing grade to the coarsest.
Milling sets how fast it works; the contact tank decides how much gets used.
The pore structure is chosen before anything is milled. Colour jobs start from a coal or wood base with wider pores; trace organics start from shell char.
The carbon is milled and sorted by size to a stated range, not just an average — the finest particles in the mix affect both how fast it works and how the slurry settles.
Dry powder or a slurry is dosed ahead of the clarifier or into a dedicated contact tank. Contact time and mixing decide how much of the capacity you paid for actually gets used.
Spent carbon is removed along with the settled solids, or on a filter. Carryover into downstream equipment is the failure mode to guard against, so this step is checked, not assumed.
Grind and feedstock are chosen against contact time and what the treated stream must comply with.
Coal based · 200 mesh
The general-purpose dosing carbon. A wide pore range for mixed municipal loads, at a cost that suits routine seasonal use.
Shell based · 325 mesh
Milled finer, made from shell char, for short contact times and trace targets where full uptake has to happen inside the tank.
Acid washed · low extractables
Washed and tested to food-contact criteria, for decolourising syrups, edible oils, beverages and fermentation broths.
What each property actually governs once the bed is running.
The property that sets powdered carbon apart from every other form. It controls how fast the carbon works and, at the finest end, how well the slurry settles out afterward.
Capacity for small molecules, same as any carbon. Read it alongside particle size — capacity you can't reach in the contact time available doesn't count.
The decolourising indicator — the number that matters most when the job is removing colour rather than trace organics.
Affects both the actual dry weight you dose and how the powder handles in a dry feeder before it reaches the water.
Varies with feedstock. Matters most in food and beverage duty, where an acid-washed, low-ash powder is used instead.
Decides silo and feeder sizing, and how much storage you need to hold a season of dosing at the design rate.
When the load comes and goes, when there's no vessel and no budget for one, or when contact time is too short for a granular bed to work. If the load is steady and predictable, a granular bed almost always costs less per kilogram of contaminant removed.
By jar testing on the actual water, at the contact time your plant can give. Lab data narrows the candidates, but the dose that hits your target outlet is confirmed experimentally, since other organics in the background matter as much as the target compound.
Not in practice. It leaves with the sludge and is disposed of along with it — which is why the economics are worked out over a season of dosing, not against the price of a granular fill.
It will, if it carries over. Whatever separation step you use — clarification or filtration — has to be designed to hold back the finest particles, and the very finest grinds are avoided where the margin is tight.
All three, chosen for the job. Wood and lignite bases give the strongest decolourising power, bituminous coal suits mixed municipal loads, and shell char is milled where trace organics are the target.
Send us your water analysis, the contact time available, and the separation step you have in place. We will come back with the grade, dose range and a jar-test protocol to confirm it.
