Our subject today is lighting charcoal grills. One of our favorite charcoal grill lighters is a guy named George Goble (really!!), a computer person in the Purdue University engineering department.
Each year, Goble and a bunch of other engineers hold a picnic in West Lafayette, Indiana, at which they cook hamburgers on a big grill. Being engineers, they began looking for practical ways to speed up the charcoal-lighting process. "We started by blowing the charcoal with a hair dryer," Goble told me in a telephone interview. "Then we figured out that it would light faster if we used a vacuum cleaner." If you know anything about (1) engineers and (2) guys in general, you know what happened:
The purpose of the charcoal-lighting shifted from cooking hamburgers to seeing how fast they could light the charcoal. From the vacuum cleaner, they escalated to using a propane torch, then an acetylene torch. Then Goble started using compressed pure oxygen, which caused the charcoal to burn much faster, because as you recall from chemistry class, fire is essentially the rapid combination of oxygen with a reducing agent (the charcoal). We discovered that a long time ago, somewhere in the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (or something along those lines).
By this point, Goble was getting pretty good times. But in the world of competitive charcoal-lighting, "pretty good" does not cut the mustard.
Thus, Goble hit upon the idea of using - get ready - liquid oxygen. This is the form of oxygen used in rocket engines; it's 295 degrees below zero and 600 times as dense as regular oxygen. In terms of releasing energy, pouring liquid oxygen on charcoal is the equivalent of throwing a live squirrel into a room containing 50 million Labrador retrievers.
On Gobel's Web page (the address is http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/ and scroll down....), you can see actual photographs and a video of Goble using a bucket attached to a 10-foot-long wooden handle to dump 3 gallons of liquid oxygen (not sold in stores) onto a grill containing 60 pounds of charcoal and a lit cigarette for ignition. What follows is the most impressive charcoal-lighting I have ever seen, featuring a large fireball that according to Goble, reached 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The charcoal was ready for cooking in - this has to be a world record - 3 seconds. There's also a photo of what happened when Goble used the same technique on a flimsy $2.88 discount-store grill. All that's left is a circle of charcoal with a few shreds of metal in it. "Basically, the grill vaporized," said Goble. "We were thinking of returning it to the store for a refund."
Looking at Goble's video and photos, I became, as an American, all choked up with gratitude at the fact that I do not live anywhere near the engineers' picnic site. But also, I was proud of my country for producing guys who can be ready to barbecue in less time than it takes for guys in less-advanced nations, to spit.
Will the 3-second barrier ever be broken? Will engineers come up with a new, more powerful charcoal-lighting technology? It's something for all of us to ponder this summer as we sit outside, chewing our hamburgers, every now and then glancing in the direction of West Lafayette, Indiana, looking for a mushroom cloud. Engineers are like that.
Craig1 said
01:45 PM Oct 4, 2021
A bit like The Mayor of Hiroshima, w t f w t ?
dorian said
02:06 PM Oct 4, 2021
He must have set fire to his web site because my browser can't reach it.
Dorian i googled George Gobble liquid oxygen to light bbq and got a full page about him but i dont know how to post a link just cut and paste this little bit
In 1996, Goble was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for preparing a barbecue for cooking in less than 5 seconds by the use of a smoldering cigarette, charcoal and LOX (liquid oxygen). This act attracted the attention of the West Lafayette, Indiana fire department, which warned him to never let them catch him in the possession of LOX near a barbecue fire ever again.
Goble is also noted for driving a vehicle with the Indiana license plate UNIX, and now also GHG-1.
Know any engineers?
Our subject today is lighting charcoal grills. One of our favorite charcoal grill lighters is a guy named George Goble (really!!), a computer person in the Purdue University engineering department.
Each year, Goble and a bunch of other engineers hold a picnic in West Lafayette, Indiana, at which they cook hamburgers on a big grill. Being engineers, they began looking for practical ways to speed up the charcoal-lighting process. "We started by blowing the charcoal with a hair dryer," Goble told me in a telephone interview. "Then we figured out that it would light faster if we used a vacuum cleaner." If you know anything about (1) engineers and (2) guys in general, you know what happened:
The purpose of the charcoal-lighting shifted from cooking hamburgers to seeing how fast they could light the charcoal. From the vacuum cleaner, they escalated to using a propane torch, then an acetylene torch. Then Goble started using compressed pure oxygen, which caused the charcoal to burn much faster, because as you recall from chemistry class, fire is essentially the rapid combination of oxygen with a reducing agent (the charcoal). We discovered that a long time ago, somewhere in the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (or something along those lines).
By this point, Goble was getting pretty good times. But in the world of competitive charcoal-lighting, "pretty good" does not cut the mustard.
Thus, Goble hit upon the idea of using - get ready - liquid oxygen. This is the form of oxygen used in rocket engines; it's 295 degrees below zero and 600 times as dense as regular oxygen. In terms of releasing energy, pouring liquid oxygen on charcoal is the equivalent of throwing a live squirrel into a room containing 50 million Labrador retrievers.
On Gobel's Web page (the address is http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/ and scroll down....), you can see actual photographs and a video of Goble using a bucket attached to a 10-foot-long wooden handle to dump 3 gallons of liquid oxygen (not sold in stores) onto a grill containing 60 pounds of charcoal and a lit cigarette for ignition. What follows is the most impressive charcoal-lighting I have ever seen, featuring a large fireball that according to Goble, reached 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The charcoal was ready for cooking in - this has to be a world record - 3 seconds. There's also a photo of what happened when Goble used the same technique on a flimsy $2.88 discount-store grill. All that's left is a circle of charcoal with a few shreds of metal in it. "Basically, the grill vaporized," said Goble. "We were thinking of returning it to the store for a refund."
Looking at Goble's video and photos, I became, as an American, all choked up with gratitude at the fact that I do not live anywhere near the engineers' picnic site. But also, I was proud of my country for producing guys who can be ready to barbecue in less time than it takes for guys in less-advanced nations, to spit.
Will the 3-second barrier ever be broken? Will engineers come up with a new, more powerful charcoal-lighting technology? It's something for all of us to ponder this summer as we sit outside, chewing our hamburgers, every now and then glancing in the direction of West Lafayette, Indiana, looking for a mushroom cloud. Engineers are like that.
He must have set fire to his web site because my browser can't reach it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010208101450/http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/~ghg/
In 1996, Goble was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for preparing a barbecue for cooking in less than 5 seconds by the use of a smoldering cigarette, charcoal and LOX (liquid oxygen). This act attracted the attention of the West Lafayette, Indiana fire department, which warned him to never let them catch him in the possession of LOX near a barbecue fire ever again.
Goble is also noted for driving a vehicle with the Indiana license plate UNIX, and now also GHG-1.
Here is a Wikipedia link, Dorian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Goble
There is also a YouTube video of him, but a bit too blurry to put up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sab2Ltm1WcM&ab_channel=NirvanaO5
Or in the words of the immortal Austin Powers, yeah baby!!