As stated above. Some metals and stuff are fine if you were to throw them into say, a camp fire, so to smelt them you need… hotter fire? How does one achieve that hotter fire and how/ why does it work?
In: Chemistry
The heat of the fire is energy. That energy was in the past absorbed when a chemical bond was formed.
As chemical compounds desintegrate and recombine into something else, that energy is released. Some other chemical reactions do the opposite, and the material cools down as new chemical bonds are formed which consumes energy.
The amount of heat depends on quality and quantity of fuel.
Different fuels have different atoms in their molecules, different bonds, so amount of heat per gram if fuel is different.
The quantity can be adjusted by atomizing (spraying) liquid fuel, increasing the area of contact with the oxidizer (oxygen).
Another way to get more heat is to make sure the fire isn’t starving: if you light up a pile of firewood, it burns hot, but the rate if burning is linited by oxygen. If you blow air onto the pile, instead of relying on gases naturally flowing, the burning will be more intense, and oroduce more heat. That how they smelted metals back in the day.
When I say “more heat”, I mean more heat per second. Regardless of how you burn your fuel, the total amount of heat depends on composition and mass of fuel.
By mass, hydrogen got 3 times more energy than diesel fuel, and diesel fuel is at least twice as rich as firewood.
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