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This disposal process is conducted once a week, using two 2) The potential elimination or reduction of water used to
bags of 20 litres each, amounting to 40 litres of water a week soak the burnt charcoal ash for cooling purposes.
used for soaking and subsequent disposal. This would amount
to a total of 160 litres or 0.16m3 of water disposed of a month. Charcoal's cleaning abilities will be further discussed in the
next section.
Good Environmental Practices Eco-solution
Initially, the team explored the possibility of heat transfer, Literature Review for Eco-Solution
repurposing the heat created by burning the charcoal to Activated carbon is a rough, poorly organised type of graphite,
defrost the frozen meat or optimise the combustion technique. sometimes referred to as activated charcoal. Its pores range
However, this infringed on the company's requirement not to widely in size, from visible cracks and fissures to molecular
make any changes to their cooking processes. dimensions. Activated charcoal contains small, low-volume
pores that increase the surface area available for chemical
With health and environmental concerns pertaining to the processes like adsorption. Due to its large surface area,
constant burning of the big log charcoal, one exemplary activated charcoal is widely used for several applications,
method that can be considered without compromising on such as removing water and air pollutants [3], which makes
the usage of Lohko charcoal is the implementation of quality it a very effective cleaning agent. Studies have shown that,
standards and production requirements. However, when before activation, charcoal has a specific surface area of 2.0
queried, Peng Guan explained that their Lohko charcoal was to 5.0m2g-1, which increases to 1000 m2g-1 upon activation
supplied by a local company known as Yam Cheong Nam Kee [3]. Figure 2 below further illustrates the increase in pore size
Firewood and Charcoal Supplier. When the team contacted upon activation.
Yam Cheong Nam Kee, the suppliers themselves were unsure
of the exact origin and any other details of the wood and
charcoal. The only information that was provided was that
the charcoal's origin was from Indonesia. This means that the
company can be involved in more sustainable Lohko wood
sourcing.

Thus, the alternative was to look at their pre- and post-
cooking processes, with the most potential of sustainability
coming from post-cooking, by using burnt charcoal ashes.
This presented an area where the team was able to Figure 2: Increase in pore size of activated charcoal
recommend good environmental practices to the company to
potentially adopt, as the team identified the following sound
environmental practices:
This increase in surface area corresponds to providing
activated carbons with greater porosity, which allows their
1) The potential cleaning abilities of the burnt charcoal as utilisation for the purification of products in the chemical
activated charcoal, are scientifically proven to have superior and food industries. It has been used increasingly to prevent
cleaning abilities. This could be applied to cleaning their environmental pollution as well [4].
factory kitchen's utensils or the company's other storefront
applications.

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