Do-It-Yourself PPE, Courtesy of A Water Treatment Bot
Aloha to today’s inaugural episode of Nerd Porn. In honor of the zombie apocalypse that is steadily bearing down on our physical and emotional beings, I thought today could be a review of Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) or Powdered Activated Carbon (PAC).
Now, as some of you know, in my real life, I am an actual senior environmental engineer for an actual engineering company and I specialize in water treatment, usually for industrial or hazardous waste applications. But, after a little digging and a little creativity, I’ve hit on a potential feel-good solution for you fuzzies out there that want to experiment with building your own PPE. Now, caveat, nothing in these instructions have been born out by anything as useful as actual research or field tests, but considering that we have literally no alternatives and are being forced to just sit on our collective butts, this is my small contribution to community well-being and safety. Always remember, though, even if your mask works and contains the contaminant, it’s now filthy and mustn’t be touched by your delicate, fragile organic hands! Decon everything after every use (direct sunlight, microwaving would be my recommendation), change the filter paper and wash the bejesus out of your hands every time you touch the mask and don’t touch anything else. Also, don’t forget to wear eye protection. Those goodies can dive-bomb your eyes just as easy as your mouth and hit the bloodstream through there.
Woot.
Let us begin.
So, back to GAC/PAC. This delightful material is my favorite substance in the whole world. It has delicious medical and engineering applications and is basically a silver bullet for anything you can’t deal with/aren’t sure about (as long as it’s some kind of an organic). It works by a process called adsorption. This means that its surface is a moonscape of nooks and crannies, all slightly positively charged, just begging for something negatively charged to come and live in them.
Organic stuff tends to be negatively charged. Water. Humic substances (dead stuff), bacteria. And, quite possibly, viruses. Viruses also have a mechanism that seems to attract them to cellular walls and penetrate that cell wall by the same process of diffusion that cellular nutrients use to get from the blood stream into the cells themselves. They may bond to the potassium or sodium carriers that move from blood to cell and back again.
This is very promising for us. Since a GAC/PAC (or a clay, like bentonite or kaolinite, but those are better for metals), has a positively charged surface that has what is called a cation exchange capacity (which means it’s got a bunch of positive ions just looking to whore around/swap business cards/whatever), my theory is that the virus (as carried by that lovely, fat negative polar water molecule) will find one of those cations just too juicy to resist and will promptly bury itself in one of the nooks (otherwise known as electrostatic precipitation). **Note: Cation exchange capacity is more important for sequestering metal ions and is best done with a clay. So, you know, if you need to get rid of zinc and corona, think bentonite.
Huzzah.
Now, for the good stuff. How do I build this delightful collection of adsorbing slop? Easy. There will be fire. And water. And pretty colors.
Make charcoal. Take some hard wood (not penises, you dirty organics), but things like maple. Or even bamboo (I think…never tried this one). Burn it with water. Not all the way! And make sure the water steams more than it boils and cover the whole concoction so that wood has it’s surface exploded nicely by all those water molecules flying about. Or, follow the directions here: Charcoal Magic
Grind it up. Small enough to fit in a little satchel baggy.
Get some filter paper - as little as you can find. Industrial supply stores/lab stores have nice paper. I found a boatload of 8 micron for 10 bucks that looks like it will work pretty well. If you can, sew the charcoal directly into the filter paper. If your paper is too paper-y, sew your GAC into a small little pouch made from silk or something translucent enough to get some sun into it. Here’s some filter paper that seems like it could work: Filter Paper - Damn you, Bezos
Sew a mask. Instructions may be found here: Mask Wisdom - Cute Colors
Put GAC into mask and drop the little filter paper right behind it and right in front of your mouth. This is called a treatment train, by the way, in nerd parlance. Your primary treatment method is the GAC. The filter paper is a safety treatment to prevent you from inhaling GAC particles contaminated with the goodies.
Delightful. You’re done. Neat, huh? And who says environmental engineering isn’t a real engineering field? **Note: I have actually been told that environmental engineering isn’t a real engineering field in design meetings with other engineers (mostly mechanical - those guys are monsters). Broke my heart. Or at least the 3-D, bio-printed fluid pump that I use instead of one.