This was part of another thread.
Here' s a reply from Robinson Labs:
The high reactivation temperatures people are reading about refer to complete (totally purged/desorbed) reactivation of carbon filter media that are used for adsorbing industrial/hazardous waste. In some cases with these types of material, chemisorption occurs, which creates a chemical bond between the materials being adsorbed and the substrate. To desorb these types of materials does require very high temperatures, equivalent to those initially required to activate the carbon (in the range of 800 - 1000 degrees C.
However, human odor consists of a mixture of volatile and high boiling point components - amines, aldehydes, and sulphur compounds. The high boiling point compounds come from bacterial action on fats and are typified by Butyric Acid. They tend to come mainly from the armpits and upper torso, while the volatiles come mostly from the groin area. These materials are physically adsorbed by carbon, not chemically adsorbed. In physical adsorption there is a van der Waals interaction, which have a long range, but are very weak. Physical adsorbtion is a relatively low energy process, easily reversible, rapid, and non-specific in the molecules it can capture. What this means in layman’s terms is that physically adsorbed molecules (e.g. human odor) can be readily desorbed (removed) with the modest heat levels found in residential tumble dryers.
Perhaps the biggest misconception is that we often refer to reactivation, when we should be calling it regeneration. Technically, reactivation is the act of restoring adsorptive power to a spent carbon by a process similar to the initial activation process, which does occur at high temperatures. Regeneration is any process which restores adsorptive activity by desorbing the adsorbed substances, which is exactly what we’re doing with our carbon suits in our dryers.

Keith Edberg
Robinson Outdoors