The Many Uses of Charcoal
February 21, 2016 4:26 PM Subscribe
Making Charcoal - from the fantastic Youtube channel, 'Primitive Technology'.
posted by little eiffel at 4:51 PM on February 21, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by little eiffel at 4:51 PM on February 21, 2016 [4 favorites]
We have a giant Wisconsin Oven with a oxygen purge system, 'the boss' has vetoed filling it with old pallets and making charcoal. I suspect it would fill the building with nasty toxic fumes.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 4:57 PM on February 21, 2016
posted by Confess, Fletch at 4:57 PM on February 21, 2016
I just watched this This was fascinating. Thanks for posting it.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:01 PM on February 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:01 PM on February 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
Confess, Fletch- a point made:
Most of the commercial wood has been treated with a fungicide known as Copper Chromium Arsenate; so it is not suitable as fuel for cooking fires or charcoal. It is a counterintuitively wasteful business practice to treat wood with heavy metals, because old wood is otherwise quite useful as charcoal for water filtration or bioremediation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Some countries have even banned the practice because arsenic is: toxic to the lungs as a passively emitted vapor, or inflammatory to the skin as it dissolves into ambient moisture.
posted by MisplaceDisgrace at 5:54 PM on February 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
Most of the commercial wood has been treated with a fungicide known as Copper Chromium Arsenate; so it is not suitable as fuel for cooking fires or charcoal. It is a counterintuitively wasteful business practice to treat wood with heavy metals, because old wood is otherwise quite useful as charcoal for water filtration or bioremediation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Some countries have even banned the practice because arsenic is: toxic to the lungs as a passively emitted vapor, or inflammatory to the skin as it dissolves into ambient moisture.
posted by MisplaceDisgrace at 5:54 PM on February 21, 2016 [2 favorites]
I learned no less than a dozen things from that video. And props for not mentioning Kingston or Jack Daniels even once.
posted by hal9k at 6:04 PM on February 21, 2016
posted by hal9k at 6:04 PM on February 21, 2016
It's probably because of the Ortberg code words for gay thread one post up, but my brain really, really wants to read "Wisconsin Oven" as a euphemism for something naughty.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 6:04 PM on February 21, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by strangely stunted trees at 6:04 PM on February 21, 2016 [3 favorites]
Copper Chromium Arsenate
Well there's compact phrase that just piles on the toxicity. What's next, mercuric beryllium plutonide?
posted by traveler_ at 6:11 PM on February 21, 2016 [5 favorites]
Well there's compact phrase that just piles on the toxicity. What's next, mercuric beryllium plutonide?
posted by traveler_ at 6:11 PM on February 21, 2016 [5 favorites]
I suppose you could find mercuric beryllium plutonide in the rainwater collected from Guangzhoù after the Chinese military blew up a weather satellite.
The problem is that chromium and arsenic co-occur within copper ores; so as the demand for copper goes up, lower grade ore is used, and thus more CCA is produced.
I estimate that it is possible to achieve the same fungicidal effect purely with dissolved copper. The chromium could then be used for surface coatings like stainless steel, and the arsenic synthesized into veterinary medicines. The chemical separation would take more energy; but with the precise addition of flocculants and humectants, each element could thusly be prepared for the next step in the process.
Chemistry is an integrative science where safety is always a primary concern. The choice of additives here is something that can informed from environmental science, traveler_.
posted by MisplaceDisgrace at 7:07 PM on February 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
The problem is that chromium and arsenic co-occur within copper ores; so as the demand for copper goes up, lower grade ore is used, and thus more CCA is produced.
I estimate that it is possible to achieve the same fungicidal effect purely with dissolved copper. The chromium could then be used for surface coatings like stainless steel, and the arsenic synthesized into veterinary medicines. The chemical separation would take more energy; but with the precise addition of flocculants and humectants, each element could thusly be prepared for the next step in the process.
Chemistry is an integrative science where safety is always a primary concern. The choice of additives here is something that can informed from environmental science, traveler_.
posted by MisplaceDisgrace at 7:07 PM on February 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
I spent this entire video waiting for a jump cut to THE HELVETICA SCENARIO.
posted by turbid dahlia at 7:11 PM on February 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by turbid dahlia at 7:11 PM on February 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
Somewhere, out there in the vastness of the internet, is a girl. When she was much younger and into Anime, she would have devoured this entire just for the native sights and sounds of Japan. Once she got older and discovered Downton Abbey, she would have devoured this just for the precise accents and inflections. Now that she is an adult and trying to reconnect with her dad, she's been taking up smoking BBQ as a hobby, and has... just... ordered... the... CHARCOAL... smoker.
This girl just exploded into a glittering cloud of confetti. A shinto shrine to her and a Cornish saint based roughly upon her life have both existed since the 13th century.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:55 PM on February 21, 2016 [3 favorites]
This girl just exploded into a glittering cloud of confetti. A shinto shrine to her and a Cornish saint based roughly upon her life have both existed since the 13th century.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:55 PM on February 21, 2016 [3 favorites]
Most of the commercial wood has been treated with a fungicide known as Copper Chromium Arsenate; so it is not suitable as fuel for cooking fires or charcoal.
Pallets aren't necessarily meant to last an especially long time, so I doubt that they're treated. The company I work for does a lot of shipping and storage with palletized loads, has a whole system for dealing with loads on bad pallets, and uses pallets that are too worn out to use any more as fuel for the boiler to heat their buildings. CCA provides the greenish tint that characterizes pressure-treated lumber, and pallets don't generally look like that.
posted by LionIndex at 9:16 PM on February 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
Pallets aren't necessarily meant to last an especially long time, so I doubt that they're treated. The company I work for does a lot of shipping and storage with palletized loads, has a whole system for dealing with loads on bad pallets, and uses pallets that are too worn out to use any more as fuel for the boiler to heat their buildings. CCA provides the greenish tint that characterizes pressure-treated lumber, and pallets don't generally look like that.
posted by LionIndex at 9:16 PM on February 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
my brain really, really wants to read "Wisconsin Oven" as a euphemism for something naughty.
Duh. It's like inflicting a Dutch Oven upon someone except you've been eating nothing but cheese and perhaps lutefisk for a month.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:51 PM on February 21, 2016 [6 favorites]
Duh. It's like inflicting a Dutch Oven upon someone except you've been eating nothing but cheese and perhaps lutefisk for a month.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:51 PM on February 21, 2016 [6 favorites]
The concern with pallets is not generally CCA, but various fungicides and pesticides that may have been used to treat them, especially if they are shipped internationally.
posted by ssg at 10:45 PM on February 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by ssg at 10:45 PM on February 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
The description of how charcoal cooks is very outdated and sounds like they were told something and just ran with it. No juices are being "locked in", a temperature gradient is a property of all direct heat methods of cooking, and so on.
That said, that white charcoal looks like the business.
posted by flippant at 11:24 PM on February 21, 2016
That said, that white charcoal looks like the business.
posted by flippant at 11:24 PM on February 21, 2016
I don't know the science at all but I do know that when I cook burgers in my charcoal-fueled kamado they are juicier and tastier than any other method I've tried. Gas grills just don't compare.
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:57 PM on February 21, 2016
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:57 PM on February 21, 2016
The flavour is from the smoke caused by drippings hitting the coals; the juiciness is because they cook faster.
posted by flippant at 1:06 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by flippant at 1:06 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
MisplaceDisgrace, did you just make up that comment about CCA whole cloth? It's not a byproduct of copper mining and the chromium and arsenic are added for a reason, not just by mysterious happenstance. I don't really want to turn this into an extended derail like in the cheese thread, but damn, dude.
posted by ryanrs at 3:30 AM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by ryanrs at 3:30 AM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
This is all a ploy to get me to go out and go into debt buying a Weber grill, isn't it? I especially want the spit/rotisserie extension thingy. Love to try my hand at a leg of lamb.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 5:01 AM on February 22, 2016
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 5:01 AM on February 22, 2016
Chemistry is an integrative science where safety is always a primary concern.
This is so spectacularly untrue I wonder if you need to spend some more time in the lab. Or, as one of my co-workers told me, "Safety glasses? I have a Ph.D. in chemistry: I don't need safety glasses." Lab safety, process safety, environmental safety, consumer safety... chemistry is great, but nobody's found a solvent for human stupidity yet.
posted by sneebler at 6:44 AM on February 22, 2016
This is so spectacularly untrue I wonder if you need to spend some more time in the lab. Or, as one of my co-workers told me, "Safety glasses? I have a Ph.D. in chemistry: I don't need safety glasses." Lab safety, process safety, environmental safety, consumer safety... chemistry is great, but nobody's found a solvent for human stupidity yet.
posted by sneebler at 6:44 AM on February 22, 2016
Isn't most pressurised wood treated with ACQ instead of CCA now anyways? Still wouldn't want to use it as a cooking fuel though.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:48 AM on February 22, 2016
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:48 AM on February 22, 2016
So people just drop a piece of charcoal into their rice cooker?
posted by sourwookie at 6:53 AM on February 22, 2016
posted by sourwookie at 6:53 AM on February 22, 2016
Seems like such a waste of wood and time just to use the charcoal to cook some chicken kebabs. Doesn't natural gas burn at much the same temperature as charcoal?
posted by mary8nne at 9:35 AM on February 22, 2016
posted by mary8nne at 9:35 AM on February 22, 2016
Seems like such a waste of wood and time just to use the charcoal to cook some chicken kebabs. Doesn't natural gas burn at much the same temperature as charcoal?
The video notes (and gives a demonstration) that the combustion of natural gas throws off water vapour as a byproduct , resulting in some "steaming" of the kebabs in question. No water vapour results in crispier kebabs.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:23 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
The video notes (and gives a demonstration) that the combustion of natural gas throws off water vapour as a byproduct , resulting in some "steaming" of the kebabs in question. No water vapour results in crispier kebabs.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:23 AM on February 22, 2016 [2 favorites]
I was impressed with how many varieties of drawing charcoal that Japanese folk were making.
posted by sebastienbailard at 8:30 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by sebastienbailard at 8:30 PM on February 22, 2016 [1 favorite]
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