Juphil A. LamanilaoBSChE-4

CENAPRO Chemical Corporation“…making water potable – activated carbon”

It’s indeed black, the ambience surrounding the plant as I stroll around. Wearing a hard hat seems to feel the essence of an engineer. I carefully adjusted the strap to obtain the maximum protection. A thorough lecture was given about the company’s history & background and a simple demonstration on how their product works. I also noticed that the company mainly uses coconut shells as activated carbon instead of wood due to its unique distribution of pores diameter and during activation, it creates millions of pores at the surface of the carbon thus increasing the total surface area. In the manufacturing plant, I’ve seen how activated carbon is produced from coconut shell. In order to produce charcoal, it must be heated in the absence of oxygen. To achieve this, this must be burned at very high temperatures in steel boxes. The smoke is given off by this process and contains chemicals such as formaldehyde and ammonia, as well as coal gas, coal tar and alcohol. After the charcoal is collected, it is treated with oxygen to open up its pores. At this point, the charcoal becomes “activated”. The equipments used in the activation process are the vertical-type fluidized bed oven and the rotary kiln. I also learned the mechanisms by which activated carbon removes contaminants from water; adsorption, and catalytic reduction, a process involving the attraction of negatively-charged contaminant ions to the positively-charged activated carbon. Organic compounds are removed by adsorption and residual disinfectants such as chlorine are removed by catalytic reduction. The only known hazard is that activated carbon is combustible in the presence of strong oxidizers such as permanganate, ozone, liquid oxygen and chlorine and if a fire occurs, emits carbon monoxide into the air. In the laboratory, the products are analyzed thoroughly to ensure that the products meet the quality standards and test parameters including benzene activity, total ash content, hardness, dust & moisture content, etc.