One of the problems every walker faces in choosing a stove is how to compare their performances. The claims by the manufacturers are notorious for spin, hype, and in a few cases a bit worse. In this series of articles we present solid scientific measurements of the performance of a wide range of canister stoves, principally in terms of heating efficiency (grams of gas required) and heating rates (aka boil times). Part 3 (this article) presents a 'shootout' between most of the heat-exchanger stoves currently on the market, plus a comparison of them with the stoves listed in Part 2, to see under what conditions (if any) the heat-exchangers deliver a net weight reduction.
- Part 1 of the series explained how we made these measurements, including a test rig developed especially for the task.
- Part 2 surveyed a wide range of conventional Upright and Remote canister stoves for performance.
- Part 3 (this article) surveys Heat Exchanger stoves and see if and when they offer a weight advantage.
- Part 4 will examine various other aspects of stove efficiency, including pot diameter.
What is a 'heat exchanger' stove? Actually, in nearly all cases the heat exchanger has little to do with the stove. Rather, the term means that the pot has a ring of heat-sink fins around the base. The flames from the stove, or the hot gases from the flames, go through these fins, which will hopefully improve the efficiency of heat transfer from the flames to the pot.
ARTICLE OUTLINE
- Introduction
- Test Measurement Principles - Recapitulated (again)
- Interfering Effects
- The Stoves
- Test Results
- Analysis
- Heat-Exchangers vs the Rest
- Burner Heads
- Stove Efficiency vs Flame Diameter
- Stove Efficiency vs Power Output
- The Efficiency of Heat Exchanger Fins
- Efficiency in Real Life
- The Crunch Line
- Summary
- Addendum: Comments on Individual Heat Exchanger Stoves
- Jetboil GCS
- Jetboil Helios
- MSR Reactor
- Primus Eta Power
- Primus Eta PackLite
- Primus Eta Express
# WORDS: 7360
# PHOTOS: 4
Member Exclusive
A Premium or Unlimited Membership* is required to view the rest of this article.
* A Basic Membership is required to view Member Q&A events
Discussion
Become a member to post in the forums.
What everyone really wants to see is something blown up. Safely, of course.
Hi Joe
> What everyone really wants to see is something blown up. Safely, of course.
Sigh – you should read the articles at BPL, especially the one on
Exploding canisters! Your wishes would be answered. However …
.
.
This burst at 100 C with one hell of a bang.
Cheers
I viewed the below linked video with the sound off, so I will not vouch for the narration, but the video is pretty interesting:
How not to use a stove.
P.S. The video is unnecessarily long. The action is at 7:47, so move the progress indicator to about 6 minutes when the stove goes out and he tries to re-light it.
Hilarious. The guy is utterly ignorant and incompetent!
Cheers
Hey Roger,
What happened to Part 4 of this series – efficiency, pot diameter etc.
I was also wondering if part 4 and 5 are up yet? It has been nearly a year and half since the last post.
thanks
Mike
Hi All
Yeah, been a while. I am still working on this with the help of Tony Beasley, but life has seriously intervened for both of us. I will try to get both of us back to it.
The short summary of our findings so far is that pot diameter does matter.
The larger the pot, up to a point, the better the efficiency of heat transfer. So beer cans are really inefficient.
Cheers
Become a member to post in the forums.