so i just learned that people make charcoal by putting wood in some container with little oxygen and build a fire around it. but why not just burn the wood directly, and take the leftovers?
im guessing some of the wood burns away if you aren’t using a container, so it’s less efficient, but if you’re in a forest with limitless wood it doesn’t really seem to be worth the effort when you can easily just create a bigger fire. another reason i can guess is that the charcoal you get from using a container is higher quality. if that is the case, why does it produce higher quality charcoal, and what does it mean for charcoal to be higher quality?
In: Chemistry
Wood has a lot of volatiles inside of it. Charcoal is the process of superheating the wood to get volatile gases to burn off and moisture to leave without burning the carbon. In the case of the coal left from a normal fire, there will be lots of leftover junk still in the wood that didn’t cook off so the fire from made with those coals will be dirtier. When charcoal burns it is much cleaner as the only thing burning is the leftover carbon of the wood and non of the “other stuff” that was in the original wood
Latest Answers