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Topic: Activated Charcoal  (Read 2347 times)

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Offline kamiyu

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Activated Charcoal
« on: July 15, 2014, 12:35:26 PM »
Recently I used activated charcoal to purfiy an important compound. It works!!

But one question, do you guys know what exactly activated charcoal selectively absorbs? I used it because I guess there are come colored imurities in my sample

Offline Arkcon

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Re: Activated Charcoal
« Reply #1 on: July 15, 2014, 12:40:31 PM »
Activated carbon has a high surface area made up of a vast network of graphite rings.  It tends to selectively absorb aromatic compounds by pi-bond stacking.  There is however a great deal of ambiguity in how activated carbon works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activated_carbon#Properties
Hey, I'm not judging.  I just like to shoot straight.  I'm a man of science.

Offline Enthalpy

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Re: Activated Charcoal
« Reply #2 on: July 16, 2014, 12:21:54 PM »
Do small aromatic rings stack? I believed that because of graphite (and may have even read it), but benzene crystals organize differently if I get it well: the hydrogens target the center of neighbour benzene's carbon ring, making a sort of H shape but in 3D.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Benzene-xtal-3D-vdW.png
http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/4309?e=averill_1.0-ch12_s05
well, sources diverge.

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