Everything about Bone Char totally explained
Bone char, also known as
bone black or
animal charcoal, is a granular
material produced by charring animal
bones: the bones are heated to high temperatures (in the range of 400 to 500 °C) in an oxygen-depleted atmosphere to control the quality of the product as related to its adsorption capacity for applications such as defluoridation of water and removal of heavy metals from aqueous solutions.The quality of the bone char can be easily determined by its color. Black charcoals are usually undercharred bones that still contain organic impurities which may impart undesired odor and color to treated waters. White bone chars are overcharred bones that present low fluoride removal capacity. Grey-brownish bone char are the best quality chars for adsorption applications. The quality of the bone chars is usually controlled by the amount of oxygen present in the charring atmosphere. It consists mainly of
calcium phosphate and a small amount of
carbon. Bone chars usually have lower
surface area than activated carbons, but presents high adsorptive capacities for copper, zinc, and cadmium
Uses
Bone char is used to remove
fluoride from water and to
filter aquarium water.
It is often used in the
sugar refining industry for decolorizing (a process patented by
Louis Constant in
1812). This is a concern for
vegans and
vegetarians, since about a quarter of the sugar in the US is processed using bone char as a filter (about half of all sugar from sugar cane is processed with bone char, the rest with
activated carbon).
It is used to refine
crude oil in the production of
petroleum jelly.
Bone char is also used as a black
pigment. It is sometimes used for
artistic painting because it's the deepest available black, though
charcoal black is often satisfactory and is more often used. Ivory black is an artists' pigment formerly made by grinding charred
ivory in
oil. Today it's considered a synonym for bone char. Ivory is no longer used because of the expense, and because animals that are natural sources of ivory are subject to international control as
endangered species.
Historical production in the USA
During the settlement of the American mid-West in the late 19th Century a large number of buffalo bones, artifacts of an earlier extinction campaign, were a nuisance to the new inhabitants. One way to dispose of them was to sell them for industrial use for around $10 per ton. The payment to bone pickers was often for goods or services rather than cash.
By the end of the 1890's there were fewer remaining buffalo bones and so bone pickers began to raid Indian burial grounds. This practice was eventually stopped after some controversy.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Bone Char'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://bone_char.totallyexplained.com">Bone char Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
