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@monsterblue it's not actually anything special about the activated carbon itself, it bonds just as well as normal charcoal to stuff
it's just that activated carbon has such ridiculously high surface area that there's a ton of space to bond to--we remember seeing a figure once of a football field of area per gram of activated carbon
-F
@monsterblue you can get a really good catalyst out of it too, you see PdC used in chemistry a lot, that's palladium-on-carbon, where you take activated carbon and put an atomically-thin layer of palladium on it
palladium is a really good catalyst, but only the surface is active, so getting it to have the ridiculous surface area of activated carbon lets you both save on volume and money (Pd is extremely expensive)
-F