Catalytic Carbon Filter Media

We want to go over our catalytic carbon with you and why it is so important that you make sure that you replace your carbon when it is time. If you have a carbon filter now, whether you purchased it from us or whether you purchased it from somebody else, whether that carbon filter is an upflow carbon filter, or if it is a back washing carbon filter with electronic control valve on the top, this carbon is the best carbon you could possibly get.

Coconut-based catalytic carbon typically lasts anywhere from 3 to 7 years, depending on your water usage, of course, and depending on what type of contaminants and how much of the contaminants you actually have in your water.

Your standard carbons out there, whether it's just a regular coconut-based carbon or what we call granulated activated carbon (GAC), usually last anywhere from one to three years. So the catalytic coconut carbon has a much longer life expectancy than your other standard carbons out there.

The reason for this is right here on the website. It goes over why the catalytic coconut carbon is so much better. It's due to the process that you can read up here on our website at qualitywatertreatment.com. So if you have one of our systems, or if you have a system that you are needing new carbon for please visit us at qualitywatertreatment.com and use our chart to get the proper amount of catalytic coconut carbon for your system.

One of the most important things that I want to note here for the catalytic coconut-based carbon is [that] a lot of city water municipal water supplies are switching from disinfecting your water, from using chlorine to what we call chloramines. Chloramines is a chlorine ammonia-based.

So the reason why they're doing this is because there are a lot of municipalities out there where they're experiencing a lot of new buildings and a lot more population coming into their areas. And they are not able to kill the bacteria and viruses properly along the distribution system. And what I mean by distribution system, just in case you're not sure what that is, distribution system, when it comes to supply water to different homes and businesses is you have your water plant here where they chlorinate and treat the water.

And then you have your home or business over here. Well, in between these two, you have a lot of distribution lines from point A to point B. On those lines, distribution points, they have different testing areas that they need to take samples from to test the chlorine residual, and then test for bacteria to make sure that it's coming back as a negative test. What they've been finding is that the chlorine is not able to keep up with the supply and demand on that. So they're coming up with no residual at all of chlorine in their life.

And a lot of times, they're coming back with a positive bacterial contamination test, whether it's Coliform or E. Coli. So what they've been doing is they've been boosting their chlorine levels up as far as they could possibly go to the mcl, which is the maximum contamination level, for what they're able to do as per government regulations. And even by doing that, in some cases, it's not enough. So the residual is still dissipating out before it could reach your home or your business causing issues, again, with contamination.

So they've switched to chloramines in those particular cases because chlorine has a lot longer life expectancy than chlorine does. And that is the reason why they're doing it. So they can go ahead and not choke you to death with over chlorinated water. They're regulated by that mcl, so they have to not go above that anyway and to make sure that they're killing the bacteria viruses effectively by using chloramines versus chlorine.

Now, there's two major downfalls of using chloramine over chlorine. One is that chloramine is highly corrosive to metals. So any plumbing that you have in your home that's metal, it will attack it.

Matter of fact, there are studies out there, a lot of different plumbing companies that have replaced copper plumbing at homes that are less than three years old, that are where there are city water and there's chloramines in the water. And where there's been pitting and leaking and everything else, where they've had to replace different sections of the plumbing. And then install an upflow catalytic carbon filter in order to remove the chlorine effectively so the damage doesn't continue on the homeowner's plumbing.

The other downfall of it is that chloramine is much harder to remove at higher flow rates than chlorine. So your standard carbons out there as your standard coconut based or granulated activated GAC carbons, yes, they will remove chloramines, but they won't remove chloramines at higher flow rates.

And when I say higher flow rates, I'm going to refer to a shower. Your average shower is 1.5 gallons per minute. It doesn't seem like a lot. But if you have a one or a 1.5 cubic foot carbon filter on your home, which are the typical sizes, or if you have a carbon cartridge, which is much smaller, hence the flow rates are going to be even less, 1.5 gallons per minute, you're going to miss some of that chloramine. You're not going to get it all out. So you're still going to have some chloramines in the water, which number one is not healthy for you. Number two, bad for your plumbing.

So we have done a lot of research on this over the years and we switched to using a coconut-based catalytic carbon, probably five years or so, maybe longer, because more and more municipalities are going to chloramines now. Last time I checked, over 30 % of municipalities in the United States has switched to chloramines, and that is just rising every year. So the catalytic coconut-based carbon will actually remove the chloramines at a very high flow rate effectively.

And so that is the reason why you want to replace the carbon that you have with the catalytic carbon-based type media. I hope that helps you.