What is hell?

Typically, fire comes from the chemical reaction between oxygen in the air and some type of fuel (wood or gasoline, for example). Of course, wood and gasoline do not spontaneously catch fire just because they are surrounded by oxygen. Combustion reaction to occur, you must heat the fuel to its ignition temperature.

Following sequence of events in a typical wood fire:

* Something timber selection to a very high temperature. Heat can come from many different things – a match, focused light, friction, lightning, something else that has been burning …

* When the wood reaches about 300 degrees Fahrenheit (150 degrees Celsius), heat decomposes some of the materials that make cellulose in the wood.

* Some of the decomposed material is released as volatile gases. We know this as the smoke gas. Smoke is compounds of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen. The rest of the form of char that is almost pure carbon, and ash, which is a whole unburnable minerals in the wood (calcium, potassium, and so forth). Char is what you buy when you buy charcoal. Charcoal is wood that has been heated to remove nearly all the volatile gases and leave behind the carbon. That’s why a charcoal fire does not burn the smoke.