Home Made Water Filter

Dry charcoal sounds perfect ....Oxygen free heating might not be possible on your own ... but that how its made commercially. Think: Giant pressure cooker filled with, oh ... ground up corn stalks ... that you raise to 1000 degrees without allowing oxygen into it. Water, hydrogen, etc. gets released, but thanks to the original organic matrix, the carbon is left in a spongy matrix ... lots and lots of surface area.

thank you so much for replying to my curiosity re: activated charcoal!
Dry charcoal (sterile and porous) is ready to do its work of filtering. Perhaps that is what is meant by activated or is it that the carbon must be commercially produced to be called activated charcoal.
I'm fascinated by this statement "Formed through heating carbonaceous compounds (say, moldy grain) in an oxygen free atmosphere". Is this product black? ...and what kind of heating is oxygen free? Thanks

"thank you! ...I'm still curious about what activated charcoal is : ) "

Chunks of relatively pure carbon that have a huge surface area relative to its volume. Think: little bits of carbon sponge, where contaminants (through various processes) gets stuck to the surface. Formed through heating carbonaceous compounds (say, moldy grain) in an oxygen free atmosphere.

In a pinch, use the black that forms on a burnt log. Not perfect, but better than nothing.

try play sand at your major hardware stores

I'm makin my own water filter too! I found some charcoal used for filtering the water for fish, all I really need now is fine grain sand! I jest cant find any in stores! Pls help and suggest.