Charcoal

Charcoal is a lightweight black carbon residue produced by strongly heating wood (or other animal and plant materials) in minimal oxygen to remove all water and volatile constituents.

Charcoal burners, skilled professionals tasked with managing the delicate operation, often lived in isolation to tend their wood piles.

The scarcity of easily accessible wood resources eventually led to the transition to fossil fuel equivalents like coal.

It is also utilized in cosmetics, horticulture, animal husbandry, medicine, and environmental sustainability efforts, such as carbon sequestration.

Illegal and unregulated charcoal production, particularly in regions like South America and Africa, poses significant challenges to environmental conservation efforts.

For example, in the Harz Mountains of Germany, charcoal burners lived in conical huts called Köten which still exist today.[when?]

The massive production of charcoal (at its height employing hundreds of thousands, mainly in Alpine and neighbouring forests) was a major cause of deforestation, especially in Central Europe.[4][when?]

Complaints (as early as the Stuart period) about shortages may stem from over-exploitation or the impossibility of increasing production to match growing demand.

The question of the temperature of the carbonization is important; according to J. Percy, wood becomes brown at 220 °C (430 °F), a deep brown-black after some time at 280 °C (540 °F), and an easily powdered mass at 310 °C (590 °F).

[2][6] Modern methods employ retorting technology, in which process heat is recovered from, and solely provided by, the combustion of gas released during carbonization.

[citation needed] To obtain a coal with high purity, source material should be free of non-volatile compounds.

Charcoal has been used for the production of iron and steel (where it also provided the necessary carbon) since at least 2000 BCE, with artifacts having been found in Proto-Hittite layers at Kaman-Kalehöyük.

[11] In the 16th century, England had to pass laws to prevent the country from becoming completely denuded of trees due to production of iron.

Wooded metallurgical regions devoid of coal like Sweden, the Urals, or Siberia transitioned from charcoal in the early 20th century.

In 1931, Tang Zhongming developed an automobile powered by charcoal, and these cars were popular in China until the 1950s, and in occupied France during World War II, where they were called gazogènes.

[14] It can be produced from regular bamboo cut into small pieces and boiled in water to remove soluble compounds.

In that case, the wood should be charred at high temperature to reduce the residual amounts of hydrogen and oxygen that lead to side reactions.

Activated charcoal readily adsorbs a wide range of organic compounds dissolved or suspended in gases and liquids.

In certain industrial processes, such as the purification of sucrose from cane sugar, impurities cause an undesirable color, which can be removed with activated charcoal.

It contains only about 10% carbon, the remaining being calcium and magnesium phosphates (80%) and other inorganic material originally present in the bones.

Today it is seldom used for this purpose due to the introduction of more active and easily managed reagents, but it is still employed to some extent in laboratory practice.

The bleaching action of the charcoal in solution diminishes as it adsorbs colored contaminants, and it must be reactivated periodically by separate washing and reheating.

The use of charcoal as a smelting fuel has been experiencing a resurgence in South America resulting in severe environmental, social and medical problems.

[30][31][32] Massive forest destruction has been documented in areas such as Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it is considered a primary threat to the survival of the mountain gorillas.

[34] In Malawi, illegal charcoal trade employs 92,800 workers and is the main source of heat and cooking fuel for 90 percent of the nation's population.

[35] Some experts, such as Duncan MacQueen, Principal Researcher–Forest Team, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), argue that while illegal charcoal production causes deforestation, a regulated charcoal industry that required replanting and sustainable use of the forests "would give their people clean efficient energy – and their energy industries a strong competitive advantage".

In an analysis of barbecue charcoal marketed in Germany, the World Wildlife Fund found that most products contain tropical wood.

[39] The last section of the film Le Quattro Volte (2010) gives a good and long, if poetic, documentation of the traditional method of making charcoal.

[40] The Arthur Ransome children's series Swallows and Amazons (particularly the second book, Swallowdale) features carefully drawn vignettes of the lives and the techniques of charcoal burners at the start of the 20th century, in the Lake District of the UK.