Is anybody aware of any specific data on the benefits of carbon or Purigen? I don't mean "years of experience", "traditions", etc. Hard data showing certain undesired substances are removed.
Apologies for not being clear. I mean activated carbon, nor carbon dosing.
You were very clear when you said Puregin. The article I linked discusses both.
Yes. Thank you. In the context of its topic, the article mosty looks at activated carbon as a mechanical filter. It showed no benefits.
The section on GAC details that activated carbon removes 15 fold more DOC than protein skimmers. DOC in not mechanical, it’s chemical and it includes thousands of organic compounds. which include phenols & turpins.
They do say that. The study however looks only at the mechanical filtering out of bacteria by the activated carbon vs a skimmer. It did not examine DOC.
Bacteria absorb DOC and are actively removed by protein skimmers as a nutrient export mechanism. You are right about this Felderman article did not detail DOC, my bad. He does in other articles. However, let me provide this link which is specific to activated carbon. While somewhat dated at 20 years there are ample footnotes to glean what you wish.
https://melevsreef.com/articles/carb...-part-1-repost
In a more recent article, Hovanec (1998) states flatly that “the best carbon for use in water filtration for removing dissolved organic carbons is bituminous coal-based carbon.” He also comments about the decline in use of coconut carbon, stating that “coconut carbons have the wrong pore size for filtering the target materials from water.”
This is an interesting article. Thank you. It's interesting to see how much various brands can differ.