Skip to content

Introduction of activated carbon | What is Activated Carbon?Raw materials

Raw materials

A carbonaceous substance can be used as the raw material for activated carbon.
Kuraray selects materials considering the difficulty in obtaining the material, amount of material required, price, reactivity with gas or chemicals, and appropriateness of quality for the products.

Materials for activated carbon in use worldwide are as follows:

Powdered activated carbon
  • Sawdust
  • Hard wood chips
  • wood charcoal (carbon from sawdust)
  • Grass ash (peat)

etc…
Granulated activated carbon
  • Charcoal
  • Coconut shell charcoal
  • Coal (lignite, brown coal, bituminous coal, anthracite coal, etc.)
  • Oil carbon
  • Phenolic resin

etc…

Fibrous activated carbon
  • Rayon
  • Acrylonitrile
  • Coal tar pitch
  • Petroleum pitch
  • Phenolic resin, etc.

etc…

Coconut shell
Coconut shell

Kuraray produces powdered activated carbon, granular activated carbon, fiber-type activated carbon, and special molding activated carbon with wood charcoal, coconut shell charcoal, coal, viscose rayon, and phenolic resin as raw materials.

When producing coconut shell activated carbon from coconuts, only the shell (see fig.) is used and 50000 coconuts are needed to produce 1 ton of activated carbon.