Charcoal Braziers and Safety

[Baisao]

Obviously, charcoal braziers can be hazardous because burning charcoal will produce carbon monoxide (CO).

I know that some folks use charcoal braziers to heat their kettles indoors and that charcoal braziers were very common in traditional Japanese homes. Of course, these homes were not as air-tight as a typical western home, but certainly they had the same dangers from CO poisoning.

When using a brazier indoors, are all your windows and doors open? or just cracked? Do you only use charcoal braziers outside? If you use one indoors, how many square feet or meters is the room?

[pedant]

I've never used a charcoal stove. About how many grams of charcoal are consumed in a typical session? Just interested in doing a theoretical calculation.

[Baisao]

I've never used a charcoal stove. About how many grams of charcoal are consumed in a typical session? Just interested in doing a theoretical calculation.

I haven’t figured this out yet because my tests outside have been failures: kettle too big for brazier; kettle too small for brazier; charcoal won't stay lit or isn’t hot enough (despite fame for being exceptionally hot), etc.

One thing to note is that a lot of the binchotan charcoal remains and can be reused.

I’ll run another test outside this weekend and see if I can bring the water to temp, now that I have a brazier that fits my kettle. I’ll also measure the weight of the charcoal going in and what the weight is of the leftover charcoal.

[Manttea]

Obviously, charcoal braziers can be hazardous because burning charcoal will produce carbon monoxide (CO).

I know that some folks use charcoal braziers to heat their kettles indoors and that charcoal braziers were very common in traditional Japanese homes. Of course, these homes were not as air-tight as a typical western home, but certainly they had the same dangers from CO poisoning.

When using a brazier indoors, are all your windows and doors open? or just cracked? Do you only use charcoal braziers outside? If you use one indoors, how many square feet or meters is the room?

I used a charcoal stove (I'm assuming same as brazier) for the first time just a few days ago. I would absolutely not recommend doing it inside. Even if it is clean burning coals, there is still smoke and burning smells, not to mention deadly carbon monoxide.

[pedant]

i started doing some back of the envelope calculations for fun

assuming you are bringing a liter of water to boil (taking it from 20°C to 100°C), that requires about 334 kJ of energy.
taking the specific energy of charcoal to be 30 MJ/kg¹, that's the energy equivalent of about 11 g of charcoal.
assuming that a lot of that heat doesn't make it into the water, let's multiply that by 5. so maybe you need about 55.7 g of charcoal to heat the liter of water. assuming the charcoal is 100% carbon and assuming the worst case combustion scenario (complete conversion of all carbon into carbon monoxide (CO)), that would generate 111 liters (or 4.65 mol) of CO (treating it as an ideal gas at standard pressure and room temperature). that sounds like a lot.

for the roughly 14x14x9 ft room i'm in now, that's around 2000 ppm of CO if you have no air exchange (sealed room).

apparently 100 ppm concentration of CO will give you a headache after 1-2 hr of exposure.
1600 ppm does this: "Headache, nausea, and dizziness after 20 minutes of exposure. Death within 1-2 hours."
i made a lot of assumptions though, but assuming i was off by a factor of 10... 200 ppm gives "Dizziness, nausea, fatigue, headache after 2-3 hours of exposure."²

moving on..

then i found an article with an actual experimental approach. they looked at binchotan and came up with this figure:
"Theoretical ventilation requirements for charcoals to prevent CO poisoning are estimated to be 41.2–55.6 m³/h/kW." ³

if you want to heat up that liter of water in 15 minutes, that means you need 0.371 kW power output from the stove.
so based on their experiments and calculations, that means you need a range hood on the stove that gives 4-6 L/s (liters of air per second) of ventilation to not get poisoned while heating up a liter of water in 15 minutes.

based on these calculations (who knows how far off base i am...), i would prefer to do it outside. if you want to do it inside, consider opening up the windows, using a fan, and having a CO alarm installed in the room lol

[1] https://energypedia.info/wiki/Cooking_with_Charcoal
[2] https://www.detectcarbonmonoxide.com/co-health-risks/
[3] https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/in ... 9/_article

[Baisao]

Then i found an article with an actual experimental approach. they looked at binchotan and came up with this figure:
"Theoretical ventilation requirements for charcoals to prevent CO poisoning are estimated to be 41.2–55.6 m³/h/kW." ³

Thank you, Pedant. I appreciate a more scientific approach to this. Based on that last formula, it looks like a 4x4x3 meter room would be safe from poisoning for at least an hour. (Is this correct?) That's a pretty small room and I wouldn't begin to consider using a brazier in a room so small without a lot of ventilation. If this is correct, it would help explain how these were frequently used in Japanese homes.

[Baisao]

I used a charcoal stove (I'm assuming same as brazier) for the first time just a few days ago. I would absolutely not recommend doing it inside. Even if it is clean burning coals, there is still smoke and burning smells, not to mention deadly carbon monoxide.

What kind of charcoal did you use? Was it lit & readied outside before bringing inside? How big was the room you used it in?

Cheers!

[Manttea]

I used a charcoal stove (I'm assuming same as brazier) for the first time just a few days ago. I would absolutely not recommend doing it inside. Even if it is clean burning coals, there is still smoke and burning smells, not to mention deadly carbon monoxide.

What kind of charcoal did you use? Was it lit & readied outside before bringing inside? How big was the room you used it in?

Cheers!

Coconut charcoal commonly used for hookah, used 12 brickettes. I lit it using my cooking stove, then took it outside. Took about 20-30 minutes to get boiling everytime I added water, really have to be patient with it. Might use more brickettes next time

[Baisao]

Coconut charcoal commonly used for hookah, used 12 brickettes. I lit it using my cooking stove, then took it outside. Took about 20-30 minutes to get boiling everytime I added water, really have to be patient with it. Might use more brickettes next time

That's good feedback on those. I've been curious about them.

I've been using binchotan and think it is overrated: too long to light, doesn't want to stay lit, and not as hot as its reputation suggests. Even generic charcoal is hotter. The only things going for binchotan are that it is smokeless and reusable. I'm going to try rambutan charcoal this weekend and see if it is better.

[Manttea]

Coconut charcoal commonly used for hookah, used 12 brickettes. I lit it using my cooking stove, then took it outside. Took about 20-30 minutes to get boiling everytime I added water, really have to be patient with it. Might use more brickettes next time

That's good feedback on those. I've been curious about them.

I've been using binchotan and think it is overrated: too long to light, doesn't want to stay lit, and not as hot as its reputation suggests. Even generic charcoal is hotter. The only things going for binchotan are that it is smokeless and reusable. I'm going to try rambutan charcoal this weekend and see if it is better.

Coconut coal stayed lit for about an hour, worked well, I'd recommend it

[tealifehk]

I briefly considered going the charcoal route, and then went with ceramic glass instead. Seems like too much to deal with indoors!

[Baisao]

I hope this doesn’t kill the thread because the central question (and how to use braziers safely) is still important. But, as I was running a test this evening on ronbutan charcoal I began to whistle and talk to our parakeets as I passed them. One talks to me and I parrot it back to him: “Hi, Henry! How are you?”. Then it dawned on me: ‘keets are famously sensitive to gasses! I quick online search turned up numerous articles about parakeets saving human lives because they alerted families to the problem by suddenly dying. Some of these families had no symptoms, indicating that the CO levels were probably at an acceptable level for humans. Well, I’ll use charcoal for the rare cool day outdoors but stick to electric so long as we have ‘keets.

[Victoria]

I hope this doesn’t kill the thread because the central question (and how to use braziers safely) is still important. But, as I was running a test this evening on ronbutan charcoal I began to whistle and talk to our parakeets as I passed them. One talks to me and I parrot it back to him: “Hi, Henry! How are you?”. Then it dawned on me: ‘keets are famously sensitive to gasses! I quick online search turned up numerous articles about parakeets saving human lives because they alerted families to the problem by suddenly dying. Some of these families had no symptoms, indicating that the CO levels were probably at an acceptable level for humans. Well, I’ll use charcoal for the rare cool day outdoors but stick to electric so long as we have ‘keets.

Interesting in Mexico the chicleros cook everything outdoors, and the parakeets seem okay hanging around the cooking area. Maybe you could bring a few inside while cooking as an alert system
CWarren uses a brazier all the time. On instagram he's cwarrencollins. I pm'd him a few days ago about it also.

[CWarren]

CWarren uses a brazier all the time. On instagram he's cwarrencollins. I pm'd him a few days ago about it also.

I only light my charcoal outdoors so I’m no authority on indoor use. My plan was to place an indoor hood in my tea room at some point for proper ventilation but given the time it takes to get to ember there is much more to worry about than just smoke even with the “smokeless” Japanese varieties. I’d only consider it after going to ember and then bringing the coals indoors under vent or by a large open window and only in a large room, (my tea room is about 12’ x 20’). I use bamboo, olive pit, sumi and binchotan. I would advise against indoor use with bird owners as it can have fatal consequences, (incense and candles as well).

[pedant]

sorry for being offtopic, but if you ever forget about a teflon-coated pan on the stove and it starts smoking, get your birds out of there asap. the fumes are bad for humans but apparently kill birds real quick.