My particles won’t separate without neutralizing the solution. I want to understand why?

I etched active carbon with a concentrated KOH solution and added HCl to neutralize the KOH. Separeted the particles with centrifuge at 4000 rpm. They should be micron sized.


My boss asked me to stop using HCl and just separated the KOH with centrifugation. But the separation didn’t work. What influenced this?


