We carefully weighed Kingsford Original charcoal briquettes, a hardwood charcoal with no chemical additives that could affect the results, and placed them into three commercially available steam table pans. Each contained a slightly different shaped piece of charcoal. One for the briquettes straight out of the bag, one for each briquette that he pounded coarsely with a mallet, and one for the briquettes that he spent 24 hours in the dehydrator in the cabinet (also crushed). High setting. To this party we brought his three humidity sensors. His two homemade devices include a WiFi-enabled microcontroller programmed to record sensor data, and his commercially available Lüft Indoor Air Quality Monitor ($249). A little later, for comparison, he also used a 50-pint Zenith electric dehumidifier.
The steam table pan represents three elements. We offer product as purchased, product that has been milled to increase surface area (assuming this increases the amount of water the carbon can adsorb), and product with as much moisture removed as possible. It's a fighting chance to absorb whatever you can from the kitchen. We had him take measurements every 2 minutes and Lüft recorded his data every 6 minutes. I ran this setup for 4 days (plus 12 hours of power outage). I ran it for 24 hours with neither charcoal nor dehumidifier, 24 hours with charcoal only, 24 hours with electric dehumidifier only, and another 24 hours with neither.
