[HN Gopher] Air quality double whammy from domestic firelighters
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Air quality double whammy from domestic firelighters
Author : Kaibeezy
Score : 50 points
Date : 2023-09-03 16:50 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Kerosene paraffin contributing 50% of the carbon from a wood fire
| in the first 15 minutes. Roughly. I only really use them to light
| the barbie a few times per summer... to cook meat. So a triple
| whammy, I guess.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It's obvious that those firelighters make a lot of carbon
| particulates.
|
| Just burning one and looking at the flame, thick black smoke
| comes off it.
|
| I suspect the cellulose is the cause, rather than the kerosene.
| Perhaps the problem is that the kerosene burns at a lower
| temperature than the cellulose, and liquid kerosene can act as a
| decent heatsink via the specific heat of vaporization, therefore
| preventing the cellulose getting hot enough to properly burn.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| TLDR: kerosene is really terrible for global warming. If "fire
| starter" logs are this much of a problem, imagine how much global
| warming is caused by "smudge pots" - sooty, horrifically
| polluting burners that citrus farmers burn kerosene, used motor
| oil, hydraulic fluid, etc. in to try and keep their fruit from
| freezing during a cold snap.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smudge_pot
|
| We really, really need to stop giving agriculture a pass on
| emissions.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| ... and water usage.
| paganel wrote:
| And then what should we put on our tables? And at what cost?
| _3u10 wrote:
| Bugs, they will be supplied with your pod. Your pod likely
| won't have a table.
|
| You will eat the bugs and live in the pods.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > We really, really need to stop giving agriculture a pass on
| emissions.
|
| Not just emissions, other externalities as well. It's madness
| to grow alfalfa in California, only to ship it to Saudi-Arabia
| for cattle feed. Or for Amazon rainforest to be burned down to
| grow soybeans that are used to feed cattle on fields that were
| priorly used for soybeans and then ship the meat to the US and
| Europe.
|
| The problem is that consumers want fresh <everything> 24/7/365,
| and it would use up enormous amounts of political capital to
| get that under control.
| labster wrote:
| Honestly in the California case, the problem is much more
| about senior water rights than it is about capitalism or
| freshness demands.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Of course the problem is capitalism, to be precise: the
| lack of a mandate to price in externalities - not just
| water rights, but also CO2 and other pollution, destruction
| of extremely large swaths of land or devastation of
| biodiversity by ever larger monoculture farms - into the
| actual sticker price of products.
|
| Something like the alfalfa or Brazilian meat trade should
| be exorbitantly expensive, as should be stuff like
| strawberries from Morocco or cut flowers from Kenya to
| Europe. The emissions associated with these products are
| absurdly large, and yet it's cheap enough to be worthwile.
| _3u10 wrote:
| Capitalism actually fixes that, Brazilian beef and
| argentina and paraguay for that matter too are
| extraordinarily cheap because tariffs make them expensive
| in the US / EU.
|
| Luckily we like beef so we eat it all ourselves.
|
| You get moral superiority we get cheap high quality meat,
| everyone wins.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I don't think there's much demand for South American meat
| here in Denmark, but vegetables and especially fruit from
| Africa and South America is easily affordable and
| available when it's not in season in Europe.
|
| Capitalism has failed to take account of the
| environmental cost.
| [deleted]
| userbinator wrote:
| From the description of that article you linked:
|
| _This one has been recently lit off, as the exhaust on a fully
| hot pot becomes almost invisible with a mere hint of red
| /orange flame._
|
| They're normally not that sooty.
| Ekaros wrote:
| It seems that using biomass in small scale is quite complicated.
| At least if other than CO2 emissions are considered.
|
| You can't have either too wet or too dry fuel. You need right
| amount of air and right temperature. And then you even need to
| consider things like how the fire is started.
| _3u10 wrote:
| It's not, almost every developing country has figured out how
| to make charcoal.
| _3u10 wrote:
| [flagged]
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| [dead]
| noughtme wrote:
| For anyone unfamiliar with the term firelighter, they are talking
| about fire starters.
|
| Are these that widespread that they are concerning? I thought
| they were mostly for lazy outdoors people.
|
| I use newspaper with olive oil to start charcoal grills. Never
| had trouble starting a fireplace, wood stove or camp fire with
| anything other than tinder.
|
| Fire starter tablets often contain hexamine which I don't really
| want close to my food.
| christkv wrote:
| With a bbq chimney I've never need to use anything but
| newspaper to get the coal going.
| londons_explore wrote:
| When you try a bit of kerosene you never go back...
|
| Just a cup-full poured into the base of any fire turns it
| into a roaring inferno within 10 seconds or so, and by
| getting hotter quicker you typically avoid lots of smoke that
| you'd normally get while starting a fire with newspaper -
| especially important if you're having a fire near other
| people who won't want stinky smoke blowing across their
| gardens on a nice sunny day.
| loeg wrote:
| > other people who won't want stinky smoke blowing across
| their gardens on a nice sunny day.
|
| Bystanders aren't thrilled about the burning kerosene smell
| -- frankly, it's a lot worse than charcoal.
| _moof wrote:
| At airports we call the smell of burning kerosene "the
| sweet smell of success."
| londons_explore wrote:
| I find the smell of kerosene seems to only happen between
| opening the kerosene container and lighting it. As soon
| as it's lit, kerosene smoke at fire-pit scale seems to be
| odorless.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Then maybe you're not standing downwind.
|
| It absolutely stinks and sometimes for as long as twenty
| minutes depending on how much was used.
|
| I'm not a chemist and I have no idea what's responsible
| for the odor. If it's some kind of intermediate
| byproduct.
| supportengineer wrote:
| I don't want that in my food
| arijun wrote:
| As a kid I would set the charcoal chimney above a box fan
| after getting it started a bit. You'd get a pillar of fire
| coming out the top in no time at all.
|
| Nowadays I am lucky to have just enough room in my apartment
| for a folding bbq, but every time I have to use those
| starters I think about how much more fun that chimney was.
| arghwhat wrote:
| The idea of a conversation about the most environmentally
| friendly way of _igniting coal_ is quite amusing.
| [deleted]
| noughtme wrote:
| Charcoal and coal are quite different.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| At the same time, the most common form of 'charcoal' that
| an average person will use in their BBQ is made from both
| charcoal and coal, as well as other things.
| nielsbot wrote:
| standard charcoal briquettes contain coal?
|
| i'm amazed to hear that.
|
| (I use lump charcoal myself which seems to give to food a
| better smoke flavor)
| mcpackieh wrote:
| They do often contain coal. Briquettes are weird. For
| smoking, you really want to be using wood (or charcoal
| _and_ wood); charcoal has most of the volatiles burned
| off already, in principle leaving behind only carbon, so
| it isn 't great for smoking things.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| No regular brand of charcoal contains coal.
|
| Please link just one brand that does and I'll withdraw my
| complaint but I've worked in the industry and very much
| doubt this.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > "Kingsford Charcoal is made from charred soft and
| hardwoods such as pine, spruce, hickory, oak and others
| depending on which regional manufacturing plant it comes
| from. _That char is then mixed with ground coal_ and
| other ingredients to make a charcoal briquette. As of
| January 2016, Kingsford Charcoal contains the following
| ingredients:[7][8] "
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_%28charcoal%29#Ma
| nuf...
|
| If this isn't true, they need to fire their entire PR
| team.
|
| This MDS says it contains anthracite:
| https://www.thecloroxcompany.com/wp-
| content/uploads/kingsfor...
| crazygringo wrote:
| Wow. Son of a gun you're right. Here's more info on why
| coal dust turns out to make an ideal binder for charcoal
| briquettes:
|
| https://mineralmilling.com/coal-dust-a-superior-choice-
| as-a-...
|
| I had no idea. Key quote:
|
| "Research and patent literature show that when charcoal
| briquettes are produced using an organic binder such as
| anthracite, the binder is present in quantities of
| between approximately 2 and 8% by weight."
|
| And "coal, anthracite" is clearly listed as the third
| most common ingredient in the safety sheet for Kingsford
| Charcoal Briquettes, after charcoal and ashes.
| coder543 wrote:
| You've repeated this a few times, but I clicked on
| several charcoal options on Home Depot's website, and
| they claimed to be made entirely of "100% natural
| hardwood". Maybe some cheaper ones have added coal?
| Valgrim wrote:
| Charcoal is pyrolized biomass, not fossil fuel, which means
| it's approximately carbon-neutral. The problems with it are
| more associated with deforestation.
| legulere wrote:
| When burning things not 100% fully you produce carbon
| black, which has a greater greenhouse effect than if you
| would release carbon as CO2. Further harvesting wood
| leads to younger forests, which store less carbon than
| old growth forests. A better use-case than burning is
| using it for durable goods like in construction, which
| binds the carbon for much longer.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_carbon
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sink#Forests
|
| p.s. I'm not telling anyone to stop doing bbq, just to
| stop lying to themselves about the negative effects it
| has
| Ekaros wrote:
| Isn't there some sort of energy input in process? I
| wonder where that usually comes from in industrial
| production.
| drdrey wrote:
| Still would be better to keep the carbon solid than
| released into the atmosphere, no?
| ip26 wrote:
| Only way that realistically happens is if you bury it
| deep underground. Charcoal above the surface is part of
| the carbon cycle.
| zwirbl wrote:
| In that case you would not need to produce charcoal in
| the first place
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Conventional consumer-grade charcoal briquettes used for
| backyard BBQ typically have some amount of coal in them.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You're being downvoted, but another comment in this
| thread proves you're right:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37373903
|
| I'm as surprised as anyone. I had no idea.
| wil421 wrote:
| Anyone using briquettes should switch to lump charcoal.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| No regular brand of charcoal contains coal. Please link
| just one brand that does and I'll withdraw my complaint
| but I've worked in the industry and very much doubt this.
| amluto wrote:
| Linked just above:
|
| https://www.thecloroxcompany.com/wp-
| content/uploads/kingsfor...
|
| That's from a major brand.
|
| I was surprised to learn this. But I've always been
| suspicious of charcoal briquettes -- lump charcoal is
| much nicer. (And one should IMO always use a chimney
| starter or similar device in order to get them properly
| lit as quickly as possible and with as little other junk
| added and hopefully as little emissions as possible.)
| a1369209993 wrote:
| "Charcoal" literally _means_ "coal made by charring
| [implicitly: wood]". I assume you (and probably
| rootusrootus) mean "No regular brand of charcoal contains
| [fossil] coal." (eg, lignite, bitumite, or anthracite).
|
| (I don't know what they're on about either; presumably
| for sufficiently historical values of "conventional"
| barbecue coal was supplied from the same mines as train /
| steam engine / home heating coal, but that isn't much of
| a thing anymore.)
| beAbU wrote:
| Do you have a source for that?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Specifically, they're talking about the fire starters which are
| cellulose soaked in kerosene.
|
| Such fire lighters smell badly of kerosene (plane fuel - you
| often smell it at airports). I find that once the packet is
| opened, even if I put it in a plastic container a little smell
| still leaks out, so I now store them outdoors.
| userbinator wrote:
| Incidentally, common plastics (PE, PP) burn much more cleanly
| than these firelighters, and also charcoal. I've read about
| others using waste packaging made of these materials to light
| charcoal fires. (Don't use PS, PC, or anything chlorinated like
| PVC --- the emissions from burning those are far more toxic.)
| acyou wrote:
| Reading this was a little frustrating, as it appears to be
| written by authors who have never operated a wood-burning stove,
| and don't have a great grasp of how fire works.
|
| "In this study, we present air quality and climate effects of
| previously unrecognized aerosol source, i.e., kerosene-based
| firelighters that emit more BC than all biomass fuels put
| together."
|
| Black carbon is formed by incomplete combustion. When
| temperatures are low, and/or fuel is wet, of course there won't
| be complete combustion. Of course if you light just a firelighter
| it's going to throw off a lot of black smoke. Every fire does
| this when you first start it, because temperatures are low. Same
| goes with crude oil and coal. Fuels burn poorly and give off a
| lot of smoke without optimal burning conditions. This should be
| obvious.
|
| Firestarters work well as firestarters precisely because they are
| able to start and burn at very low temperatures. The way that
| they do this is by emitting a large quantity of organic aerosols
| and black carbon particles at very low temperatures. In a cold
| environment, the mixture won't have enough heat to fully combust.
|
| If the authors tried throwing a firestarter into a hot fire, they
| would have seen that it burns relatively cleanly, just like coal
| and oil would.
|
| Then the authors burn peat, which has an unbelievably high
| surface area, and think that it burns more cleanly. And of course
| the tests were done by igniting a cold sample, so that it would
| be a "controlled test", instead of a bomb calorimeter style test.
|
| What the authors are doing is reminiscent of using calories
| measured using a bomb calorimeter to measure how much energy the
| human body gets. It's garbage science that sounds plausible and
| has lots of pretty charts, but doesn't hold up to cursory
| inspection.
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