- Hey everybody, it's John
with Fresh Water Systems. Have ya ever wondered
what's in the little pitcher that makes your water taste better? Have ya ever wondered
what's in the shower filter to make the water feel
better and smell better? Have ya ever wondered what's in the filter
under the kitchen sink that gives that water that
wonderful clean taste? Well, it's probably carbon. Carbon is the stuff that's
been around a long, long time that makes your water taste better. Back in the ancient Egyptian times in fact they figured out that carbon
made the water taste better so there's places in the history books that talks about how they used it. Well today we use carbon
in a variety of spaces, not just for water. It's used to clean up the air. It's used to put in your insoles to make your shoes smell better and I've heard that some companies actually put it in your
undershorts to make, well you know. Carbon is used everywhere
because the advantage and the function of carbon is awesome for taking out tastes
and odors from water, odors from the air, and many municipalities use
it in their treatment process. So how does carbon work? Carbon functions through a
process called adsorption. That's not what a sponge does. A sponge works through a process
called absorption with a B. If I put sponge in water the water runs up into the pores of the sponge
but when I squeeze the sponge the water runs right back out. Well that's different
than what carbon does. Carbon works as, through a
process called adsorption and that is kinda like
adhesive or it's like VELCRO. So when organics bond with the surface area of carbon it sticks. I can squeeze it, I can
twist it, it's not comin' off and that's how carbon is so good at getting rid of the things
that cause taste and odors. So where does carbon come from? Carbon is derived from
a variety of sources. In the water filtration business it's primarily from
coconut shell, from wood, or from bituminous coal. We don't use bituminous coal
quite as much these days because there's been arsenic,
trace elements of arsenic found in the mining process
of the bituminous coal. Coconut shell is widely used
for a couple of reasons. Number one, it is a very
renewable resource and two, it lends itself very well
for water filtration. Wood products, they're
used but not quite as much in our business. Carbon filters come in a variety of forms. They come in a granular form which gives us the advantage of flow rate. A granular carbon filter
has just like it sounds, granular carbon inside. The beauty of that is
water can flow through that without a lot of resistance. The other type is carbon block and this one has a little more
capacity than the granular because we've ground it down
to a real fine grain of carbon but because it's in a block form the water flow has some resistance. So the water flow is a
little bit restricted as opposed to a granular carbon but we gain a lot more surface area. So the capacity of a block
is quite a bit higher than a granular filter in
the same configuration. From there we go to a radial flow carbon which is kind of a mix between the two. Typically a granular filter, the water has to flow
all the way to the bottom and up through the media
inside the cartridge and it flows out the top
where a carbon block, the water flows through
the media all the way down. This is called radial flow. Well imagine if we can create a filter that combines the granular capacity and flow rate benefits of granular with the radial flow of a block. This gives us a lot more
capacity than a typical granular and it gives us a flow rate benefit. Now this is only available
in a big blue 4-1/2-inch in a 20 or a 10 inch but
it has so many advantages over the standard configurations. So carbon, when it's first ground, has a certain amount of surface area and then we go through
an activation process by using heat or steam
that opens up the pores of that carbon granule. A one gram of activated carbon actually has 500 to 1,000
square feet of surface area. That's enormous and the
finer you grind the carbon the more surface area is created. So this particular capacity
would be like the parking lot down at the mall but
it's only got one floor. Now we're gonna add
and grind it even finer and we're gonna compress it into a block. We've just added about four
floors to that parking structure and expanded the capacity. The interesting thing about
carbon capacity, however, is it has only so many parking spots. So if, like at Christmas time, when you go to the mall and
you drive around and around and around and never find a place to park, well you just pull back out on the street and you go on about your business. Same things happens with carbon. If all of the surface area is exhausted and there's a car parked in
every one of those spaces, the stuff you're hoping to filter out will travel right on through. So it's very important
with carbon capacity that you make sure you change the filter or you change the media
before it totally runs out. So what is it that carbon
can remove from water? Well it's a pretty big list. Carbon takes care of things
that are organic in nature, things like volatile organic compounds. The biggest one is chlorine. Carbon is used more widely
for chlorine reduction than anything else. Now a lot of municipalities have started to go to
chloramine for disinfection. Well it takes a little bit
more contact time with carbon to get chloramine out. The chloramine is a
chlorine-ammonia compound and it takes a long time
with carbon to separate that so that they can get each
independent element out. So we use a product
called catalytic carbon and this carbon has like a coating on it that enhances the adsorption function and it's really good for
getting out chloramines. But the list goes on
for carbon filtration. Volatile organic compounds,
a lot of chemical things that get put in the water
from pesticides or herbicides fall into those lists. The carbon is a good filter media to get rid of those things. Now there's some things
that carbon on its own will not get out, for example lead. It takes a little bit
of a blended material, blended in with the carbon, to reduce lead and as long as that formula is in there they can be quite good at
getting lead out of the water. Things like arsenic, not so much. Dissolved inorganic minerals, not so much. Those things sail right through the carbon without any reduction whatsoever. But carbon on its own can
do so much, it does a lot but to get out certain other elements that fall into the mineral category, it needs a little help and that
comes in a manner of a blend that goes in with the carbon. A carbon filter typically does not make
a good sediment filter and a sediment filter, it
doesn't have anything to do with taste and odor reduction. So if you have a sediment
problem use a sediment filter to protect your carbon so
that the carbon capacity can get used up the way it's supposed to. Granular filters don't act as
a good sediment filter either. A whole house carbon, upflow
carbon or a backwashing carbon is gonna have about a mesh of 25 micron. It'll capture some dirt and debris but that's not the good purpose, that's not the best
application for carbon. So where do I use carbon? It's all over the place. Carbon is used in every
reverse osmosis system, residential that is. Carbon is used on ultrafiltration systems. Carbon is used stand alone. There are a variety of places
to use a carbon filter. The refrigerator door, or the
refrigerator filter you have has got carbon in it, I'll guarantee ya. So all over the place we're using carbon to filter drinking water. The filter in your pitcher is also carbon. When used in a system like reverse osmosis or like ultrafiltration it's
doing a multiple of things. It's getting rid of chemicals,
it's getting rid of chlorine to protect downstream
like in reverse osmosis, it's protecting that membrane. If the membrane sees
chlorine it'll get destroyed. So the carbon plays a big, big role in that type of a system. In a UF system or ultrafiltration, the carbon is doing a couple of things. It's helping get rid of chlorine
to protect the membrane, it's also where lead gets reduced as some of these systems are
rated for lead reduction. That carbon is doing that with the blend, that additive blend. And then the ultrafiltration membrane, which is typically a
tiny little hollow fiber, kinda like a microscopic noodle, that's gonna mechanically filter
all of the dirt and debris that gets down to .025 micron. So carbon is used with a conjunction in all kinds of different systems almost across the board
in water filtration. Carbon filters are incredibly effective at taste and odor reduction. With additives they can get involved with some other materials, some
other mineral or chemicals, but the question is how
often do I replace them? How long do they last? You should always replace
them at least once a year and here's why. The carbon, with all
of its parking places, is collecting these organics and over time as those parking places
get, they get occupied there's gonna be a time
when there's no more place for an organic to set down and it could possibly
start to break pieces off that have been parked
there for quite some time and the end result of that is you have water coming
out of that filter that's actually worse
than the water going in. So it's very important that
carbon filters get replaced on an adequate basis,
and that adequate basis is gonna be based on several variables but check with the manufacturer, take a look at the specs on the filter to give you the idea of how
frequently it should be changed. And that's really in a pro and
con look at carbon filtration the pro is it does
enormous, wonderful things to reduce tastes and odors. The con is if ya don't
replace it adequately enough it no longer becomes a good thing and quite frankly it
could become a bad thing. So each application can
present its own calculation on how long a filter should last. So if I have a little
bit, a little pitcher and I have a little bitty carbon filter I'm gonna have to replace
that fairly frequently because it doesn't have a lot of capacity. If I am have a bigger filter and I'm using it in a lower fashion, then I might not have to
replace it quite as frequently, and lower fashion would be I'm not putting quite as
much water through it. That's all about carbon for now. Be sure and like this video,
subscribe to our channel, and check us out on our
website freshwatersystems.com. (light rock music)
