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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Firewood
  • Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:47:10 EST


>> Woodstoves are not created to burn super dry
> wood. It isn't a problem in an open fireplace or even in a wood fired oven
> but in a wood stove it is a problem.

Airtight wood stoves are not made to burn super dry wood. In non-airtight
stoves it doesn't make any difference, anything will burn.

> >I'm sure someone else can
> better explain the "free moisture" and "bound moisture" and volatile gas
> thingy and how it is most of your heat value. Chemists????
>

Wood is made out of sugar. Plants make glucose molecules and (I'm being
inexact here, but in way of illustration) if they are jointed, as it were,
"corner
to corner", they make starch. But if they are joined edge to edge, they
make cellulose. The plant's game plan is to make sugar by photosynthesis and
store it somewhere as starch, then when the plant wants to grow, it dissolves
the
starch and relinks the sugar molecules (like pop-beads, any body remember
those?) into cellulose.

So wood is make up mainly of great interconnected bits of C6H12O6. When we
eat sugar or burn wood, we combine 6(O2) from the atmosphere with the
C6H12O6
to yield 6(C02) + 6(H20), carbon-dioxide and water, and heat. When through
enzymatic action, the action of bactria and fungi, and other chemical
actions,
the wood slowly gives off carbon-dioxide gas and water, same as if it were
burning.... very slowly.

If you ever run into an idiot who tells you that you are bad because all your
wood burning is releasing C02 into the atmospher, baloney! A piece of wood
gives off the exact same amount of carbon dioxide if you burn it or leave it
to
rot.

There are some chemical actions whereby wood gives off the water in the
glucose molecule but leaves some of the carbon behind. Carbon is black,
that's why
decaying wood is grey.

James




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