Production of Activated Carbon from Coconut Shell in Lab

1. Big honkin' hammer to beat the crap outa the shells.

2. Metal bowl to hold the powdered shells and H3PO4

3. Fire to heat it up.

If the product burns, it's charcoal. If it doesn't, it's ash.

Do your own homework!

Drying somewhat is different than burning. It's just like cooking the shell till the pure Carbon remains, bone dry. That's the way carbon is activated.

As you know combustibles is Carbon & Hydrogen content CnHm, for solids n>m, liquids could be n~=m, gaseous n<m.

Exposing coconut shell to 850 deg C without burning gets rid of H & H2O(lighter constituents evaporates from heavier carbon, uncombustibles are always there, its the ash once it burned)

And by its nature (dry & Carbon-unstable-attractable to oxides) its what you call "activated carbon"

The process of producing charcoal will also produce some gases which must be vented to outdoors, and open flames are commonly produced when volatiles in the material catch fire, after other gases, water vapour etcetera is all gone. Unless you have specialized equipment to handle flammable gases and flames, you should not attempt to do this indoors in the lab.

There's lots of video and instructional material for small scale production of charcoal from wood online - I've never seen one that is done indoors, and the same seems to apply to making activated charcoal from coconut shell. Gases released in the process include methane, carbon dioxide and organic volatiles/vapours.