Guys,
I am in the process of building a UDS. Actually have a buddy with some time on his hands who is putting it together, but I'm pretty familiar with the process. I have a lined drum and burning it out several times with a big fire has done no good at all. A torch wouldn't even hurt the liner and it is extremely difficult to get it down to bare metal. I have done a LOT of internet research on epoxy phenolic liners over the last several days and I was just wondering if anyone knows of any specific reasons why the liner needs to be removed other than just general peace of mind. As far as I can tell, the worst thing in the liner is BPA, which is the chemical which got attention about a year ago for being in some baby bottles and Nalgene water bottles. I actually found one study which concluded that heating food in a can lined with an epoxy phenolic coating did not result in an appreciable increase in the amounts of BPA in the food. I personally don't think drinking out of a water bottle with BPA is harmful (and epoxy phenolic coatings are used in water tanks and such) but realize that when you bring heat into the equation it could change. With that being said, epoxy phenolic resins are extremely heat and flame resistant and are used in such applications as firewalls in airliners (where surely you wouldn't want people you are saving from fire in a crash to just breath a bunch of poison, right?). They are also used as heat resistant handles in certain types of cookware, and also in Bakelite which is used in a variety of applications including cookware. I also found this statement--"Phenolic resins have excellent fire resistance and when induced to burn will release only minimal quantities of smoke or toxic fumes. "
SO...Is anyone cooking on their's with the lining still in or does anyone with a background in Organic Chemistry or personal experience with someone getting sick care to chime in and tell me why I shouldn't do this? Obviously I don't feel 100% comfortable with it but I'm pretty close to it. The charcoal basket design does not expose it to the most intense heat of the fire and if it won't burn or react to heat much higher than the 250 F or so that I plan to introduce it to I feel like nothing is going be released from it...
Thanks for any and all opinions!
Cary