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
The purpose of the low oxygen environment is to prevent the flames from really burning well. The main goal is to dry out the wood and burn off certain types of chemicals, not to actually burn it entirely. A slow, weak fire does that pretty well, and is easy to build.
Things only burn once. Leftover, remains of burnt wood is mostly burned, so it might ignite again but won’t last long. The weak flame will do a poor job burning, but a decent job drying out and all that.
The main component of wood that burns actually needs to get pretty hot. Think about the amount of kindling, etc required to get wood burning properly. Charcoal is the good stuff, left behind when the annoying stuff is cleaned out.
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