Chapter 20 – Charcoal & Lime

Mk23 -IRJ Droplet – Class 7 – Carpe Victoria (Wrecked)

Sector - Unknown

Planet - Unknown

15rth August 2341 (BSST)

The deer meat that had been smoking for the past five days was nearly ready. The smell, though tones down was still delicious. My mouth watered when I caught a whiff of the meat in the air. I worried that it would attract the attention of the predators. Though I suspected the ones I had encountered so far to only go for live prey it didn’t ease my tension. For, even if it doesn’t go for dead prey the scent of a fresh kill, or even the gentler smell of smoked meat may be enough to tempt in a curious cat or monster alike.

In addition to the smoking I had also salted the meat using both dry salt and a saturated salt solution during the process. At timed intervals and at east once a day I had taken the meat and dry rubbed the pieces with dry salt before setting it to rest in a brine solution for a few minutes. Setting it to smoke again straight after that and keeping the fire small and constant required fairly constant maintenance, but it would be worth it. To while away the hours, I had started making baskets and pots and bricks in the fire. After all, you can never really have enough containers.

The salt I had retrieved from the sea by evaporating the water away, leaving the salt behind. Then by using that salt, I had begun to help preserve the meats further. Hotter temperatures and more voracious predators meant that this planet was not a good place to store meats. Anyhow they were nearly done and ready to be strung up in covered baskets in the trees to keep away from scavengers.

The cold smoking process meant to preserve the meats had done well and throughout the process I had removed the little scraps to enrich the broths I had been making with the tubers.

Using the edibility tests, I had confirmed that several of the herb like plants were in fact edible and complemented my broths. Some were edible raw whilst others I had to boil to render edible.

Despite my rapid progress these past few months I still felt insecure and relatively vulnerable in the little camp I had made for myself. Over the past several days Enigma and I had begun to research from his general knowledge databanks the next steps.

We both agreed that using stones and plants had gotten me as far as could realistically be expected. Oh, sure there were a few major things I had yet to do, but what was feasible and useful had been accomplished on the whole.

A major turning point for the human race were all of the metal-based ages. From copper and bronze, to iron and then steel; each successive advancement had brought huge benefits to humanity.

The major problem though is that in almost no circumstances could you find metal in its useful elemental forms.

The copper age’s tools or chalcolithic ones were one of the few exceptions as copper occurs in a useful natural form and so was one of the earliest metals used in human life. From copper tools to the coins of the roman era, use of copper was fairly prolific.

Bronze would be harder to achieve as bronze, or at least the more useful tin bronze as opposed to arsenic bronze is formed from copper and tin. Veins of copper and tin are very rarely found in the same place. Whilst I hadn’t a clue where to get arsenic from besides apple seeds. And unfortunately, I hadn’t spotted any apples just lying around. Besides, extracting arsenic from apples. How on earth would I accomplish that?

Furthermore, why would I go for something that isn’t iron with the option to move to steel afterwards. Both copper and bronze had their uses, but in a primitive society they had no advantages over iron. Perhaps I could get some real knives and tools if I managed to get the iron extracted. Basic forging whilst difficult, hard work wasn’t rocket science. Though I wouldn’t get a perfect blade, with Enigma to tell me the temperature of any metals I started heating, it would be simplified.

The first step though would be to heat the metal ores in a smeltery to help purify them. With a heat in excess of 1200K required, conventional wood just wouldn’t cut it.

Along with making the baskets I had been fetching more and more wood and drying it by the fire for the five days I had to be waiting.

Coal was certainly out of my grasp for now, but charcoal wasn’t. The first time I had made charcoal was a downright failure. My dad had taken me out into the woods for one of our semiregular camping trips and we tried to make charcoal. With no real knowledge or experience it was a dismal failure resulting in mostly ash and soft crumbly dull sounding charcoal pieces among the rubble. It didn’t make a sound and was generally useless for burning.

With that excellent experience to back me up and an EI? AI? Well whatever. An annoying brat – yes, that works - going through a teenage phase to help. I was sure to make this a blinding success.

Since making charcoal meant a fire; and a fire made in a new way; a way I wasn’t familiar with, I headed a little way from camp. I had cleared a number of trees from here and the small dead shrubs that remained would be taken to use for the fire. What usually remained of the verdant green foliage on the forest floor and the rotting layer of dead organic material had been moved earlier. The dry stuff used in making clay like mud and the wet stuff just chucked aside.

In the heat of the ever-cooling days, though cooling down with each new day the rampant heat of the planet was still easily enough to bake the ground, cracking it as any of the moisture evaporated and the soil seemed to wither away, as if trying to escape the suns rageful glare.

With a sharpened stick I dug a small hollow in the ground and filled that with a stick about as thick around as my head. Piling the ground in to the hole again until it was flush.

Around this central stick – about a meter tall – I pilled the other dry logs, branches and sticks. Going from the thickest wood to the small scraggy branches to the dead shrubs I’d pulled from the ground.

To this mound of wood, I coated the outside in mud. Slowly working up the outside as the sticky mud dried to the consistency of a decently used football field. Sticky and firm yet easy to move and manipulate, perfect!

At the top, I left a hole about the size of a dinner plate open exposing the logs and shrubs to the open air.

At the bottom I pulled some of the supporting clay away in ten places around the wide circumference. Now that it had dried I could make small arched hollows that exposed the wood to the air. The holes would allow an air flow in the beginning burn phase of the charcoal making.

Lighting a fire in the top of the pile with embers from the fire roaring in camp took me a while but soon a warm, red blaze was going, licks of yellow piercing the light red like small dragons darting out. The fire was drying out the mud and spitting out little embers as the wood burned, they danced though the air on the wind like fireflies. Flitting around without a care in the world before fading and dying away. Their lustre and glowing warmth but a shadow of the past. The crackling snaps of the fire brought memories flooding back. Sitting around a campfire with family, bonfires and the smells of meat. The joyous sounds of happiness and the raucous cacophony of children playing. With a rush the memories fled letting the silent woodlands pierce my thoughts. The sounds of the fire a distant background sound that was ignored.

I sat and observed the progress for a few hours until I could see the flames licking at the hollows down below. The mud had changed from a dark brown to a lighter, greyer colouration. Dry and slightly cracked the contrast to the mud still wet from production that was used to fill in the hollows and then top was fairly sharp.

Once the mound had been sealed I had nothing left to do but wait. It would be done tomorrow or perhaps the day after. When the mound felt cold to the touch I would know it was done.

Like magic the wood would be turned into charcoal, well not quite magic

Wood is primarily made up of 3 components: Cellulose, Lignin and Water. The cellulose and lignin bind to form what we would call the wood while the water is adsorbed to the surface of the structure. As a percentage of the dry wood the water content of fresh wood could contain up to 100% weight and down to around 40% whilst cured wood was about 15%.

Water takes heat to evaporate off and so therefor reduced the overall heat of a fire as much of the energy generated is used for this purpose. To get good charcoal we do not want the water there and so we have to drive it off by burning the wood. This unfortunately does reduce the amount of charcoal produced.

The pre-drying by the fire and out in the sun will help make the charcoal a better quality as less water will need to be evaporated. Though proper temperatures are the most important thing.

Once the wood has been thoroughly dried to almost no water content the fire heats up and it begins to break down in a process called pyrolysis releasing water vapour, methanol, acetic acid, tars and non-condensable gases; hydrogen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

The mud seals the mound and makes it a low oxygen environment to help halt the complete combustion. Incomplete combustion then occurs turning the wood into charcoal and burning off the by-products slowly.

With the charcoal being produced I move onto the next major building material I need. Lime. Lime or Calcium carbonate and the derivatives are incredibly useful in numerous ways including:

-Agriculture

-Concrete

-Construction

-Water treatment

-Glass making

-Leather tanning

-Mortar

-Plastics

-Numerous other less primitively useful things.

The main way of producing lime is from the thermal decomposition of limestone. Seashells and corals could be used but for any reasonable quantity this is simply impractical.

Calcium Carbonate or limestone is heated to very high temperatures of around 1200K and then calcinates into quicklime or Calcium Oxide. Too high a temperature is bad though as the limestone burns forming dead lime which is unable to be slaked. In other words, it is useless. This calcium oxide can be hydrated with water to form slaked lime. With a slight excess of water, the slaked lie becomes a sort of putty. Mouldable and sticky it can be used in masonry. When the putty sets after carbonation it has turned back into limestone.

Limestone, as a rock formation can have a range of colours from a sandy yellow to a fairly dark grey.

The formation usually has a layered structure as limestone is made up of layered muds, silts, shells and organic fragments that get compressed down into layers or beds. These beds have a series of vertical fissures running through them as the series under stress collapse. These fissures are then susceptible to weathering which exacerbates the fissure. These beds and fissures make up the blocky look that natural limestone formations have.

Whilst I have no current use for lime mortar I will in the near future if my plan comes to fruition. The tepee and extension have been a good start, but they don’t really cut it anymore. Over the past few months I have been making mud bricks in preparation of building a better house for myself. Using a section of tough bark, I had made a mould. The bricks were cuboids with even width and depth and greater length.

Roof tiles were also made with the clay. When I built the house, I would use the lime mortar to fill in the gaps and waterproof the roof as well as its adhesive properties. But all of that was to come.

In the morning, when I laid my hand on the mound tentatively it was cold, well at atmospheric temperature. I seriously doubted that the planet ever seemed to get cold.

Using a sharp stick, I plucked at the mud coating pulling away chunks on one side to expose the charcoal beneath. Near the hole the wood had been turned to ash. Unfortunate, but it did fulfil its purpose; that of a sacrificial layer for the fire to consume. I did collect the ash in one of my pots though. It would be useful as an aggregate or filler for the mud clay I’ve been using.

The charcoal was dull and had white streaks on it indicating a poor quality. Though when I moved my hand through it it sounded metallic, an almost tinny sound, as corals and shells sound as the water drags them over each other.

It is light and when I pick it up my hands get stained with the dust. The whitish layer puffs up into the air as I snap the charcoal in half. The inside is shiny and more like the charcoal I wanted.

Not all the logs have fully pyrolyzed into the charcoal or ash and some smouldering pieces remain in the centre. I collect what is useful as well as the ash and powder in separate pots slash baskets and demolish the rest of the mud mound. Now empty of wood it has no use and so I nock it down with a firm hit on the top.

With the charcoal made perhaps I can finally move onto more advanced things. If I can get a machete or knife to defend myself with that isn’t a karambit fighting knife meant for human opponents, I’ll feel much safer. An axe also sounds like a good idea.