in this video I'm going to be answering one simple question that a few people asked
On that previous episode
Where I build a see-through wood gas generator
And that is will the charcoal that's left over
From producing wood gas burn?
There's only one way to find out
Let's try it
I'm going to start out here by filling this vessel
With chunks of mesquite hardwood
And it's going to be pretty interesting because
I found out that wood gas is comprised
mostly of hydrogen and carbon monoxide
But the charcoal that was left over still has fuel
I'm going to start out by putting the wood
Through the same process as I did in that previous episode
So we have the same type of charcoal left over
Look at that wood gas
Should I burn that?
It looks like while we were heating up the beaker
I noticed that the bottom started melting a little bit
So I turned it down and Bam
The whole thing broke
but that's okay I'm just going to load everything up
into this empty paint can
Throw it on the burner and continue on
And just to be sure that there's nothing else left in that wood
I decided to heat the entire container up
Until I couldn't see even the slightest bit of smoke coming out of the hole
It's all done cooking and funny enough
During the whole time I was worried about
the burner making a hole in the bottom of the can
And it was fine until I turned the burner off
And some oxygen got in there
And we now have a hole
But after the burner was turned off
So I was kind of interesting
But let's open this up and take a look inside
And see what our charcoal looks like
And the first thing I noticed looking at this charcoal
Is I'll grab a piece out
It has like a oil sheen to it
And another thing I notice is here's some regular charcoal for reference
It's a lot lighter than ordinary charcoal
And it also has a different sound listen
It's kind of like a sponge
And it just breaks right apart
And just for reference this container was almost full before cooking it
and I can see that even the tars from the wood
Have been pretty much disintegrated
Burned into ashes
And somebody had a great idea
They asked that I eat some of this charcoal
They said it has health benefits
I'm not going to eat it but I am going to see if we can cook something
That I can eat
We are ready to cook
And I brought in none other than the infamous Weber grill
I filled half of the grill with our wood gas charcoal
And half of it with regular lump charcoal that you would buy in the store
I looked up charcoal and the one thing that I did read
Is that charcoal is mostly carbon
And the other thing I know about charcoal for sure
is that because it doesn't have any moisture
and it doesn't have a few other things
It burns a lot hotter than wood
I read up to like 2400 degrees
We are ready to go we have our lighter fluid our hot dogs
And our two different types of charcoal
I would guys charcoal on this side
And lump charcoal on this side
Just like you would an ordinary grill
It's been about 3 minutes
And the first thing that I notice
Is that the wood gas charcoal lit up right away
It looks a lot more gray than the ordinary charcoal
I'm not sure why that is it's like lit and it's hot
I even have the air on the grill underneath closed
So there is no air going in there
I'm just going to start cooking
because this is all about the wood gas charcoal
Not the lump charcoal
Interestingly enough it looks like the wood gas charcoal
Which is this side
Is cooking better than the regular charcoal
Just seems like more even heat
And it's cooking faster I mean these things look pretty good
Uh oh those are a little bit burned
That's the verdict
I guess you can cook with wood gas charcoal
it seems to work a lot better than regular charcoal
I'm going to serve them up and see how they taste
I haven't had a hot dog in years
And actually tastes pretty good
That's really interesting
this is after all of the charcoal has finished burning
This is what's left over nothing but ashes
And this was the wood gas charcoal
That was a regular charcoal you can see that there is definitely
Some other chemicals left in that charcoal because it's brown
And this is white
Well that sums it up apparently you can
Burn the charcoal that's left over from producing wood gas
And cook with it
Leave some comments share your thoughts
Hit that like and subscribe button
And I will see you next time
Next time
and what I do know about charcoal is that a Burns a lot hotter than wood
I have experienced this firsthand
When I was about 10 years old
My mom had one of those big gas grills
Out on the porch
And I thought it was a great idea
I had a bag of charcoal
And the lava rocks we're pretty much gone
and I filled the gas grill up with charcoal completely
Started the gas grill up
Got ready to cook
and about 5 or 10 minutes or later
I look out the kitchen window
And I can just see a big
Glowing orange light
So I run to the kitchen and I look out
And the grill was literally melting in front of my eyes
And falling apart
And the whole porch started on fire
I went out there and put it out
and that was my experience with charcoal burning hotter than wood