Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) is a staple of the water purification industry. It is used for municipal drinking water, industrial water and wastewater treatment, and it is the component of the majority of consumer water filtration products. Like many of our natural resources the continued use of GAC is not sustainable.

The majority of GAC is made from coconut shells. Unfortunately the current demand for coconut shells exceeds the available supply. This is causing the cost of GAC to rise rapidly, and more importantly it is beginning to cause a shortage in available carbon filter products.

The problem is that the coconut shell is a byproduct for the coconut industry. Shells are not the meat and potatoes of the coconut business, but instead a nice icing on the cake that allows coconut buyers to make a little extra money off of the otherwise discarded shells. As a result coconut growers are not going to plant additional farms just to sell coconut shells.

These realities spell out a critical shortage of GAC to purify our water supplies.

The good news is that Glanris 901-X media, a biocarbon product offers many of the properties of GAC but also the ability to remove metals such as lead, copper, mercury and arsenic.

If there is a shortcoming in the water industry it is that humans seldom take proactive measures to head off known and dangerous future water changes. Until we open the tap only to drink poisoned water we generally don’t react. When we do react, there is always panic and there are always multitudes of people who wind up suffering poisoned water.

Glanris 901X is an unique biocarbon not only because of the contaminants it removes, but also because it can be inexpensively recharged, and the use of it reduces CO2 in the environment. The real magic of this product however is that it can be blended with GAC in filters thereby relieving the excessive demand on a limited coconut shell resource.

Stay tuned for new filter designs in which this miracle media helps keep the world’s water clean.