If you pulled out the smoke from a fire, would it burn hotter?
In: Physics
Smoke is tiny particles, removing those particles after they have been made is likely to do nothing. If you remove the particles and the air containing them, you will produce a low pressure region. Oxygen rich air will flow into that region, and the extra oxygen might make the fire burn better.
Smoke is a result of incomplete combustion, so if you somehow found a way to have smoke-free fires, yes, you would be releasing more energy, ergo, you would have a hotter flame.
Pulling out the smoke from a fire would require ventilation, and cause more fresh air to be sucked to the fire, increasing it and making it burn hotter. So in a way, yes. But probably not the way you (or the rest of Reddit) thought 🙂
The notion of those smokeless firepits like solo stove or breeo is that they channel superheated air through some venting which then burns off the smoke. This influx of air through the vents is hotter than what the fire initially produces so that it can efficiently burn that smoke off. Or so marketing explains. But they work!
It depends on what you mean. For example, just pulling the air and smoke with a vacuum would cause fresh air with more oxygen to flow into the fire. With more oxygen, the fire could burn hotter. On the other hand, if you made the fuel just right so that no smoke is made, then the fire could burn hotter as it uses up the fuel more efficiently.
However, just putting some rocks around the fire will make it feel hotter, as the heat goes into the rocks which spread out the heat more comfortably. A fireplace is designed for this.
However, every fuel has a maximum temperature. No amount of pulling smoke, or flowing oxygen, or carefully placed surroundings will make pine logs burn at the temperature of the sun! This is why coal burning forges exist. Folks who heat up metal and beat it with a hammer have some detailed opinions on exactly which kind of coal is hottest.
To directly answer the question, yes. Just about every way I can think of pulling the smoke out could make the fire burn hotter, but there is no guarantee that the measured temperature would increase because there are other things that make a big difference.
Pulling in more oxygen would do more than pulling smoke out.
However, if you pull out smoke, more air will get pulled in.
More air getting pulled in will result in a more complete combustion, which results in less smoke.
This is why a forge has bellows, to get more air to burn more fuel.
You can’t really pull it out as it is produced after combustion has happened. Smoke is an indication of partial combustion. Basically some wood caught fire and some was ejected away by the heat/air pressure.
There are fire pits that claim to be smokeless. They help improve the combustion through improved airflow as well as pre-heating the air and as a result the fire burns hotter which significantly reduce the smoke that is produced from burning wood.
Fires need to breathe – smoke makes it harder for the fire to breathe. Making it so that the smoke gets away from the fire quicker means that the fire has more air to breathe.
Are you replacing it with fresh air?
If you suck out the smoke and replace it with fresh air then there’s more oxygen to react and it should burn fire. Most furnaces and even chimneys work because of this.
If you replace it with something other than fresh air then there’s a good chance of killing the fire. There are CO2 fire extinguishers that do this.
If you just suck it away in say a vacuum chamber or in space then the fire will die fast.
That’s a tricky question. In the smoke there is hydrogen which helps fuel a fire, say in a room. Halon fire extinguishers used to bond with this gas removing it from being used as a fuel. And the fire would go down considerably. A revolution in fire fighting. But we had to get rid of them. Before the big “global warming” scare there was the the “hole in the ozone” scare. so we lost it.
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