We’ve seen how useful activated charcoal made with coconut shells are in life from our previous article. In that same article, we also talked about how you can make activated charcoal from coconut shell yourself. So here we go with a guide on how to make activated charcoal with coconut shell.
So don’t worry, it’s not all that hard.
What You Will Need
To start with this guide on how to make activated charcoal with coconut shell, here are the things you’d need to get started.
- The coconut shell itself
- A drum sink,
- An oven,
- Buckets or plastic pails,
- Distilled water,
- A 100-mesh sieve,
- Draining tray,
- A wooden/iron grinder the likes of pestle
- Calcium chloride/zinc chloride (25%)
Now that you have everything you need, you’re ready to proceed with how to make activated charcoal with coconut shell. Don’t worry the process isn’t that complicated so even if you’re a beginner, you should still be able to do this successfully.
How to Make Activated Charcoal with Coconut Shell
Separate and clean the coconut shell
The first thing you have to do is to separate and clean the coconut shells from other materials like soil or fiber. This make sures that the coconut shells are clean. Once you’re done separating everything from the coconut shells, you can move on to the next step.
Sun dry the shells
Now that coconut shells are clean, sun dry them for 1 to 2 days. This will be the step that takes the longest as you’ll need your coconut shells to be as dry as possible and sun drying is the most effective way to do that.
Burn the charcoal in your prepared drum sink
Take your dried out coconut shells and put them in your drum sink and burn it at 300~500°C (572~932°F) for three to five hours to turn it into a charcoal.
Soak the dried shells in the chemical solution
After the previous step your coconut shells will turn into charcoal. Next, the coconut shells will then be soaked/submerged in a chemical solution of your choosing (either calcium chloride or zinc chloride, don’t use both!) to start the charcoal activation process for 18 hours.
Wash the charcoal
After soaking them in the chemical solution, take out the charcoal and clean it with distilled water. Then leave it on a tray somewhere for it to be drained.
Dry the activated charcoal
Technically you’re already done with this guide on how to make activated charcoal with coconut shell, but there’re still some things you have to do before you can use it. First thing first is that you should dry the activated charcoals in an oven at 110°C (230°F) for 3 hours.
Ground the charcoal
And for the last step on how to make activated charcoal with coconut shell, all you have to do is put your activated charcoals into the 100-mesh sieve you’ve prepared earlier and then ground them with any tool of your choosing.
Afterword of How to Make Activated Charcoal with Coconut Shell
As you can see, following this tutorial is very easy. The only things that might be a little hard to get by yourself are the drum sink and the chemical solutions. But other than that, everything’s available at your fingertips.
If you interest to access more information about coconut charcoal you can visit our website or click here to get the best quality of coconut charcoal.