How to make charcoal carbon and flammable gas?

Here is a simple, and cheap solution to play.. It's absolutely free, and it's fun. So, let's start!
Be careful, because this is dangerous. Watch out of the gases that are coming out of the hole, and on a very, very hot bowl. You could use some glasses, or mouth mask if you have it.
In pictures you can see what you'ill got!

And.. Visit my page!

Step 1: Things we'ill need

* Metal bowl - The most important thing, can be from tin of food, or from facial cream, dosen't important
* Cover for Metal bowl - If it's of facial cream, no probem, but if it's of the tin of food, you can take some sheet metal a cover it, be careful about the holes around.
* Toothpicks - About 20
* Hammer - For a nail
* Middle nail
* Lighter

Comments

[dava_2]

I don't know really. I've talked to my chemistry teacher. He told me that possible can be gas metan(CH4) or carbon oxide(CO)-Which is a poison gas! He don't really know. And about the carbon that leaves after the instructable, he said that is grafit, for drawing, we have it in pencils..

[devonfletch]

Carbon monoxide (CO)may well be among the products of the charcoal oven, but lighting the exhaust, as you have done, would convert this to carbon dioxide (CO2), and the end result would be CO2 and H2O. Completely harmless (well, almost!), the fumes coming off the paint on the Nivea tin would be much more dangerous!
CO is a poisonous gas, but not in the way that Cyanide is, which could see you drop dead on the spot. To do serious harm, you would have to follow the plan of the exhaust-in the-window suicide. We all get a whiff of CO when we walk through the exhaust belching from every car with an internal-combustion engine.
But BEWARE the fumes from burning paint! Carcinogens abound in man-made chemicals, and they often take years to manifest themselves, when a cancer just 'appears'.

[nutsandbolts_64]

 It could be methane, not "metan", or hydrogen (the H2 in h2o), and CO is carbon monoxide, not oxide, yes it's poisonous, and there is some, there is water vapor, but I don't think it's graphite, not "grafit", left over. For general terms' sake lets just say there's flammable gas and water vapor coming out and what's left is charcoal. By the way, your teacher might have mistaken it with charcoal pencils.

[lor74cas]

Usefull for the 7 dwarfs  hut :-)

[dava_2]

Just careful ^^

[S1L3N7 SWAT]

I believe that's called "Wood Gasification." You can actually run an internal combustion engine with that as fuel. You've demonstrated the general idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator

[dava_2]

Kiteman, ok, I'ill change it.

About the "pure carbon", my friend also told me that is not a pure carbon.

Westfw, to be honest, i thinked there is no wather. I still think that gas i "metan" - CH4. So, if it burns, must be something else then carbon and wather. That was my project from chemistry, so I will ask me teacher to explain me that.

[westfw]

Making your own charcoal using essentially this method can be very important for making your own fireworks/pyrotechnics, because charcoals made from different types of wood can behave quite differently in finished chemical mixtures.

Part of the reason for this is that charcoal is NOT "pure carbon", but has miscellaneous volatiles and such in it.  Part of the reason is based on physical structure.  Part of the reason probably has to do with their being more than one type of  "pure carbon" (graphite, diamond, buckyballs, etc...)

and here's an interesting question for your chemistry buffs.  In theory, the charcoal forming reaction is:

(C,,6,,H,,10,,O,,5,,),,n,,  ----->  6N C + 5N H,,2,,O

(cellulose decomposes to carbon and water.)

What then, is the burning gas?  Water vapor doesn't burn.  Carbon in any form is not a gas...  Could you find a more accurate equation for the reaction?  How?

[Kiteman]

The term you need is "pure carbon", or charcoal.

"Clear" is the same as "transparent".