At 10:18 AM 7/11/2011, Rocket J Squirrel wrote:
>The received wisdom about them '70s canisters is that the responsible
>thing to do was to refresh the activated charcoal. Is that unnecessary?
>Stuff lasts forever?

The property of activated charcoal that makes it interesting is that
it has truly enormous surface area, something on the order of an acre
per teaspoon IIRC  (say a hectare per 15 ml for the
avoirdupois-challenged*).  Gasoline vapor adsorbs onto that surface,
then is later pulled off and recycled into the engine.  The charcoal
doesn't do anything chemically, it just sits there.

*nonono, not the fat people...the CGS and MKS and SI crowd. ;-)

Yours,
David, fat man and devotee of irrational units