from what i understand, aquachar is wood preserved in its original structure not compressed from dust like most activated carbons. It is also not activated with acid which would weaken its structure - acts more like graphene than charcoal. read only good things from hobbyist running it in tumblers and reactors
I honestly don't know where to begin. This sounds like sales person speak to try and confuse and thus scam a potential victim.
Both are made of charred wood, how is it that this stuff is spiraled graphene but activated carbon is just "dust"? They are both made of the same stuff. The difference is this stuff hasn't been cleaned out, aka activated, so all the useful pores are filled with dust. As far as compressed, the act of compressing it actually hardens the surface and reduces the amount of dust/fines produced. The smaller particles of standard activated carbon also mean their is greater filtration surface area because there is less dead space between particles. These large particles have pores that are too large to actually do any chemical filtration. Again, it is horticulture charcoal. It isn't even proven to be useful in horticulture!
The picture above doesn't prove anything. The lump charcoal has larger gaps in it, so there isn't much accumulation of bacteria. Also means there isn't much filtering going on either. If people are tumbling this stuff, then they are filling their tank with carbon fines which has been linked to HLLE in tangs.
Seeing scams like this frustrates me. The webpage selling this stuff is like page one out of Scamming for Dummys. I mean, this is the first sentence from the webpage on what Aquachar is,
"While living in Africa and seeing the crisis first hand, Inventor/Applied Quantum Physicist Richard Ricardo was working on a process to purify water on Mars."
This is exactly what scammers do. They throw stuff like this at you because if they do then you think it is good stuff. I mean, how could it not be. Inventer/Applied Quantum Physicist that wants to go to Mars came up with it. Honestly, I would be more inclined to believe the stuff worked if a biochemist came up with it. At least a chemist knows how carbon filtration works on the molecular level, aka the whole point of using carbon filtration.
If you use this stuff, use at your own risk. At least don't pay $140 for what amounts to charred wood. Buy the cheap stuff from anywhere else and try that. I linked one such place to purchase in a previous post. And if you have tangs, please be wary that HLLE is a horrible disease and has been linked to excess carbon fines in the water column.