My husband is curious as to wether there is an ingrediant mixture and/or a panteted process, because there seems to be only two different brands on the market. And if the process were easy, he would have thought more companies would process it, and it would be cheaper as well, since coal itself is inexpensive.
Anonymous
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Charcoal is not made from coal: it is made from wood, which is roasted in a kiln to break down the sugars and starches and drive off the resulting water, leaving carbon and some metal oxides which will show up as ash. The charcoal is then combined with a bonding agent (I believe it is a form of wax) and pressed into briquettes. The bags in which these are packed are very fragile (easily degraded by sun and heat), so the charcoal should be placed in a more secure container as soon as convenient.
josh l
Actually charcoal is made from wood, not coal. It is quite simple, in fact you have probably already done it. In the process of burning wood, there are three stages: driving out the moisture, burning the gases in the wood, and finally, burning the hot coals, which are what remains after the gas is burned out. This is charcoal. In seems counter-intuitive, but the charcoal we buy is actually burnt wood. The reason you would burn charcoal instead of regular wood is because the final stage of burning wood generates large amounts of heat with little flame, which is desired in cooking. I'm not sure why there's not more companies that make charcoal, but there are a lot of people that do for a hobby.
Anonymous
Charcoal is made from wood not coal. Very Slowly burned at low temps for a long time it is an Ancient process that has been modernize today but has been around for a long long time.
aichip_mark2
Sometimes powdered coal is added to charcoal, but charcoal is carbon from slowly burned wood, and created in a low-oxygen heating process.
twinsfan
i think i remember charcoal being made from wood not coal. check wikipedia.org