VOCs?

VOCs burn off at temp, regardless if lump is actually lit.

if you have good smoke, you're good to go

I agree, great question.  If you don't mind I'll ask a related question.  For lack of a better option, I use Royal Oak.  It takes 1 1/2 - 2 hours to get good smoke on a full load.  I see some guys talking about putting food on in 45 minutes.  My question, are they using a different lump that the VOC's burn off faster?

They dont burn off.  They get carried away on air. Volatile in this sense means easily vaporized

In a practical sense, you could air out the lump on a tarp all spread out and you'd lose much of the VOCs. Not that you'd actually do that...

it's the draft that carries them away. And the heat of the interior makes the VOCs more volatile. 

what makes perfumes smell are volatile organic compounds.  same for new paint in your living room.  neither are considered especially 'flammable'. 

'volatile' has a couple meanings in the dictionary, but in this case, it actually has nothing to do with fire or burning.  it really just means "what makes the stuff smell like fuel".   the fire introduces a draft as well as increases the heat, but it doesn't need to hit 1200 degrees.  it's just that the warmer it is, the easier the stuff vaporizes.

just like how the perfume smells different on a women's warm neck than it does as a straight spray

Put your hand in the smoke and smell your hand. If it smells good, you're good. 

In my own testing, things happen with lump around 350F.  The temp will rise for several hours.......then if you weigh it after the temp drops back down, it lost about 10% of its weight.  But the carbon is not burning--that won't light off until you get it up toward 700F.

So at the ~350F it's the remaining wood, tars, and/or liquors that are burning, off-gassing, whatever.  This stuff burns slower than carbon, so the more you have, the longer it's going to take to burn off during a normal fire. 

BTW, there is nothing scientific to this: it was me, my large BGE, and a FB200 with the meat probe covered in charcoal fines.  I wanted a rough idea what was going to happen before everything was sent to the lab for similar tests (but will occur at much lower temps.)

we're all saying the same thing, and no one is reading it.

so it goes.

More than likely you have some partial carbonized lump as mentioned before, or slightly damp lump that will generate more smoke than usual.

All lump, if wet, can do that!  Its nothing specific to RO.

I use Forest Lumps, Carbon Del Sur, and Rockwood almost exclusively.  Here in the lovely muggy, humid Southeast, if the bag has been out for a while or its been very humid over the past few days, the lump is usually a little smokier.

@stlcharcoal - he is the charcoal man!  Listen to him!

We can pontificate on how VOCs impact our cook all day and at the end of the day, we'll be more confused than ever. 

From an academic standpoint, know this:  charcoal is an excellent material for adsorption of organic compounds.  Those compounds are released around their boiling points, which range from below ambient temperature to over 550 F.  There are also possibly some uncarbonized organics in there. 

You don't need to know any of that.  What you do need to know is how they behave in context of building a fire to cook. 

The ideal to shoot for is to keep your fire hot.  If you don't need much heat, then that means keep it small.  Do not disturb it (stirring up the lump causes bad smoke).  In physical terms, like Stike said, the heat of the near-by fire causes these compounds to out-gas.  They mix with the flue gasses and exit the top vent.  Some of them burn.  When you have a large smoldering fire, as when you start your lump, there is an excess of VOC in the flue gas.  As that fire establishes, it gets hotter and reaches an equilibrium where they add flavor but are in a low enough concentration to not excessively condense on the food (which is relatively cold) and negatively impact the flavor.

If there were no VOCs, it would taste like you're cooking in an oven or gas grill.  The stuff you see is particulates (ash and moisture).

well.  volatile compounds are considered 'volatile' because they will form vapor at well below their flash point, ordinary room temps. it may be that they can burn (which would mean 'volatile' in another sense), but the reason they are called 'volatile' by definition is because they readily become vapor (at room temp), not because they might burn. 

what you smell when you smell gasoline are volatile organic compounds.

no need for high heat.

the smell you smell when you open a bag of charcoal is VOCs.
pretty simple concept folks.

the longer it airs out, the less VOCs.  speed the airing out by applying some heat and a draft, and good to go.

yesterday's lump will have much less of this stuff, only whats' entrained in the charcoal or what comes from burning.

the big picture is the stink at start up.  if no stink, you are good to go.  it comes down to "if it smells good, it is good."

 

Can someone explain to me how VOCs enter the lump after being turned from wood into our lump at the "lump factory "?   I mean... It's already been burned at a very high temp for quite some time to get to this lump state that we just dumped into our egg...   Are you telling me 20 or 30 more minutes after I light it the lump is that  much better?    If that's the case then why don't lump companies burn it for an additional 20-30 minutes and market it as VOC free lump ?  

Jstroke said:

I am going to concur with STLCHARCOAL. i have watched my egg burn these off many times. If you look down the hole at around 350 you can see the flames coming around the plate setter and going up the sides of the dome. After a little while they go away. These are the tars and liquors burning off that remain in the lump from manufacturing. And yes, better lumps have less of this. 

I wasn't going off dome temp, everything I did was temp of the charcoal itself.  If you see red, the temp of the charcoal is easily 1000F+ and you're burning carbon.  It's warming a cold egg, and the that temp gauge is 2ft away--has nothing to do with "VOCs" at that point.  The tars and liquors are in there from mother nature, manufacturing gets them out.  With today's emissions reqs, it's pretty tough to get them all out since you can't slow burn.

I should have clarified......The lump I was testing was in a foil pan above the platesetter.  I was using other lump to generate heat and using it to "bake" the lump in question.  I was trying to create a poor man's autoclave.  The meat probe was covered in lump fines and the pit probe was attached to the foil pan.  I maintained at a certain temps for 24 hrs to the pan to see what the fines temp did.  Then I'd start over with new fines, increase the temp by 10-20F and see what happened over the next 24.  Dome temp and the firebox temp were not any part of this.  The weight was always reduced, but the increase in the fines temp always occurred around 350F then burned for several hours.

I'm trying to find graphs.  With other ones at higher set temps you would see the meat temp (charcoal fines in pan) start to climb away exponentially from the pit temp when it they when they reached 340-350.  Then the "meat" would hold the higher temp for 4-6 hrs until dropping back down.  Weight would be reduced 10-15%.  Since our charcoal fines are 80-85% carbon, it makes sense.

Initially the "meat" temp would be lower than pit temp while they warmed up and what I assumed to be the remaining moisture evaporating.  After that, the remaining wood, tars, and liquors are all that is left.  At the end of the test, I could pull the pan out and handle the fines within 30-60 seconds--they were not ignited (carbon was not burning.)

Eggcelsior said:

marysvilleegger said:

Thanks @nolaegghead ....   Now off to google binchotan....

It's sweet, you could egg in your kitchen. It would be cheaper to eat out, though. 

I've had fish grilled on binchotan tableside.  Pretty nice touch.