I'm a bit confused about activated carbon. I thought it was a one-shot material: once it has absorbed odor causing compounds to capacity it is "deactivated" if you will. Am I incorrect? is there some way to restore its capacity?

You are correct in the context of carbon integrated in shirt fibers. The activated carbon can be recycled (reactivated) by a thermal kiln process, but that would be the end of the shirt. In addition, I would be curious to see the washing instructions: any organic material can adsorb onto the surface of the carbon, and the depletion of the available surface area during washing may be greater than from the quantity of odor molecules. Hopefully consumers of this new technology will enjoy the advantage while the shirt is young but not chuck it in the trash when it reverts to being just a shirt.

According to the manufacturer's web site, the benefits last the life of the garment. They don't provide a lot of explanation as to how, but they do recommend using heat in the garment care.

Activated carbon uses the adsorbance process to control odors. Adsorbance is a reversible process dictated by temperature. The activated carbon surface area is full of pores, the sizes of the pores and the size of the adsorbant (odor) dictated the interaction energy between the adsorbant and the adsorbate. The higher the interaction energy the higher the temperature required to desorb the adsorbant.

COCONA uses coconut shell activated carbon. Body odors are molecules such as butyric acid, isovaleric acid, and trimethyl amine. These molecules are all similar in size. The coconut shell activated carbon has pore sizes that are just right to adsorb these molecules at ambient temperatures and desorb these molecules at temperatures found in a washer (hot water cycle) and cloth dryers. We verified this by testing the adsorbance capacity of each COCONA certified fabric. The test determines the adsorbance capacity using butane gas. We ran experimental trials where we saturated a COCONA fabric and then washed and dried the fabric 50 times. We found that the adsorbance capacity slightly increased over the 50 cycles. The capacity increased because more of the pores of the coconut shell carbon became exposed. The reason for this is in the patented process TrapTek uses to make COCONA yarns and fabrics. TrapTek uses a protective layer which coats the carbon during the processing of the yarn. If no protective layer is used when the polyester polymer is melted to be formed into yarn the polyester will fill up the activated carbon. In a sense this deactivates the activated carbon. When the polyester solidifies to form the yarn the carbon pores are filled and covered with polyester never to be exposed. However, in the TrapTek patented process we use a protective layer which covers and protects the pores during the yarn processing and fabric production. The final step in the fabric processing removes this protective layer exposing the activated carbon pores. Further washing continues to remove this protective layer exposing more of the activated carbon pores increasing the adsorbance capacity.

A second benefit from the exposed surface area of the coconut shell activated carbon is the fast dry times found in COCONA fabrics. Experimentally we see improvements in the dry time of fabrics made with COCONA yarns. For more information please feel free to visit www.coconafabrics.com.

Best Regards,
Gregory Haggquist

All you need to do to renew Cocona fabrics is normal washing and drying!

how about the costs of this fabric?

Seems like it would be the perfect material to make diapers out of but as of now "cococna diapers" got nothing.