why charcoal burns so hot even though it’s already been burned

Question

why charcoal burns so hot even though it’s already been burned

In: Physics

Answer 1

This is similar to milk vs cheese.

Cheese is the awesome substance left over when you remove all the boring bits from milk. There’s a whole process that looks a little like cooking to make the cheese.

With Charcoal, it is burnt in a special way to make sure we just burn out the dud bits of the wood and are just left with the pure carbon fuel part.

When you normally burn wood, the pure carbon part burns really well but the rest of the wood gets in the way. Burning just the charcoal means you’re only burning the bits that “want” to get burned.