Why Barbecue Lighters Don’t Work

End of the Line

Millions of people use this technology to light the barbecue grills: a butane lighter. It works by the piezoelectric effect, applying pressure to a crystal of lead zirconium titanate to create a potential of several thousand volts, creating a spark. It’s low in cost, but spark ignition is a very poor way to ignite fuel air mixtures, especially when the mixture stoichiometry is uncontrolled, as in a gas grill. Better solutions are flame ignition or stratified charge, with the spark igniting a locally rich mixture and the resulting flame front lighting off the main vapour volume.

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