Yeontan facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Yeontan |
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| Yeontan | |||||||||
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| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 蜂窩煤 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 蜂窝煤 | ||||||||
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| Korean name | |||||||||
| Hangul | 연탄 | ||||||||
| Hanja | 練炭 | ||||||||
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| North Korean name | |||||||||
| Chosŏn'gŭl | 련탄 | ||||||||
| Japanese name | |||||||||
| Kanji | 煉炭/練炭 | ||||||||
| Kana | れんたん | ||||||||
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Yeontan (Korean: 연탄) coal briquettes used in East Asia for cooking and home heating. Made from a mixture of lignite coal dust and a gluing agent that kept the dust particles together, they were a welcome alternative to firewood and natural coal partly because they came in a consistent, stackable size and shape. There are 5 standard sizes for yeontan, and the 2nd standard is widely used in households. The 2nd standard briquette is cylindrical in shape, weighs 3.5 kg, and is about 20 cm in height and 15 cm in diameter. The standard yeontan has 22 holes drilled into its top to facilitate steady, efficient burning, and a household typically used one to three briquettes per day in the winter. A new yeontan would sometimes be placed atop the current one when it was halfway burned, to continuously maintain the fire.
The same fire used for cooking also served to heat the house, through a Korean radiant underfloor heating system called ondol.
See also
In Spanish: Yeontan para niños
