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Comment by Valgrim | Hacker News Reader

Charcoal is pyrolized biomass, not fossil fuel, which means it's approximately carbon-neutral. The problems with it are more associated with deforestation.

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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

Carbon black, or black carbon? Black carbon only stays in the atmosphere for a few weeks, and while I can't find data on carbon black it presumably falls to earth pretty quickly too, which makes me think you're comparing instantaneous rather than lifetime greenhouse effect.

Still would be better to keep the carbon solid than released into the atmosphere, no?

In that case you would not need to produce charcoal in the first place

Only way that realistically happens is if you bury it deep underground. Charcoal above the surface is part of the carbon cycle.

Charcoal is resistant to the natural decomposition that normally turns wood back into CO2. Therefore if you char wood then bury that charcoal, you don't need to go deep underground to sequester the carbon. Burying charcoal in the topsoil can sequester that carbon for thousands of years or more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrogenic_carbon_capture_and_s...

Deforestation and release of its bound carbon which will take decades for trees to recapture, manufacturing and transport, impure combustion (which may also include non-carbon pollutants), yadda yadda...

How does that become approximately carbon neutral? And that's before we look at the safety datasheets shared in the thread that indicate 15-40% anthracite/black coal as ingredient in (some?) charcoal briquettes.

Isn't there some sort of energy input in process? I wonder where that usually comes from in industrial production.

Conventional consumer-grade charcoal briquettes used for backyard BBQ typically have some amount of coal in them.

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.

"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.)

Anthracite coal, 15-40%

https://www.thecloroxcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/kingsfor...

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.)

Do you have a source for that?

Sure. Anthracite coal, 15-40%.

https://www.thecloroxcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/kingsfor...

Anyone using briquettes should switch to lump charcoal.

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.

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