Saturday, March 14, 2009

Thermolon Facts from the Company

We read some scary stuff on the internet about Green Pans. We wrote the following to the Thermolon company.....

Question about Thermolon (Green Pan)
I recently visited a web site where the author listed these ingredients in Thermolon: oxygen, silicone, carbon, aluminum and titanium. The author went on to speak badly about the silicone component.
My guess is that the ingredient is not silicone, but silicon, quite a different thing. Can you give me the actual list of ingredients or perhaps the patent number?

Answer from Thermolon company:

Thanks for your inquiry and interest in Thermolon.

You are indeed correct! Originally, National Geographic made the mistake and it spread across the web like a virus.

Thermolon has an elemental composition of oxygen(O), silicon(Si), carbon(C), aluminum(Al) and titanium(Ti). However, it is important for you to understand that there is no free silicon present in our coatings. Instead, silicon atoms are bound with atoms of other elements in a perfectly stable compound. These elements have become silica (-Si-O-Si-) - basically sand.

Possibly, I can explain by giving you an example. Water (H2O) comprises two atoms of Hydrogen bound to one atom of Oxygen. However, you do not find any free hydrogen in water! Hydrogen when mixed with oxygen is a highly explosive mixture – clearly water does not have the properties of either free hydrogen or free oxygen.

In Thermolon coatings, the Si is combined with other elements as a ceramic material. Ceramics are earth-type materials such as clays (Aluminosilicates) that have been used as cooking utensils and tableware for centuries.

I hope that this clears any misunderstanding and thank you for spotting this and passing it on to us at Thermolon.

Yours sincerely,

Mark Hosgood
Communications Officer,
Thermolon

4 comments:

ShirleyPerly said...

Oh my, didn't realize an "e" could cause such a misunderstanding. I'm glad you caught it.

Calyx Meredith said...

How smart of you to go right to the company to get a straight answer. I'm not sure I understand the chemistry but am glad you got the misunderstanding explained. Thank you so much for sharing it!

rocketpants said...

From what I've read on these pans they are effectively 'sand' or 'glass'. Thanks for sharing!

DawnB said...

man am I glad I have been helping my son study for biology!! :)

Nice catch