Extractor charcoal filter
The part that cannot be cleaned. It is replaced about every six months, and washing it is the commonest wasted effort in kitchen cleaning.
Precautions
- Check the manufacturer's instructions
Start here
What this is, what goes wrong with it, and where CleaningHQ can help.
What tends to go wrong
- Tobacco residue· no method established yet
A sticky, yellow-brown tar film deposited everywhere at once. It is the reason a room smells after everything visible has been cleaned.
Why it is difficult: Adsorption of odour molecules, Solubility and polarity
Part of Extractor hood.
In detail
A hood that recirculates air back into the room rather than ducting it outside carries a charcoal filter behind the grease filter, and it does a different job: the mesh catches fat, the charcoal adsorbs odour. The manufacturer's instruction is unambiguous and it is not a cleaning instruction — the charcoal filter cannot be cleaned and should be replaced, about every six months or as prompted. Adsorption capacity is consumed rather than blocked, so a saturated charcoal filter looks much the same as a fresh one and washing it neither restores it nor damages it usefully. It goes back in wire-mesh side up. The practical consequence is a diagnostic one: a hood that has stopped controlling smells after a thorough clean has almost certainly had its grease filter washed and its charcoal filter left in place.
Related
- Extractor charcoal filter is commonly affected by Tobacco residue
Sources for this page
Sources
Cleaning the Filters (Grease and Charcoal) — Over-the-Range Microwave
Whirlpool Corporation · Manufacturer documentation
Relied on for: That the charcoal filter cannot be cleaned and should be replaced about every six months, and that it is fitted wire-mesh side up. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — The grease filter and charcoal filter sections in full. Supports the claim as stated. Opens the extractor hood as an object with two distinct filter components and a manufacturer behind each. The grease filter gains a positive clearance; the charcoal filter gains a prohibition on cleaning it at all.
Last reviewed by a person on .