Esbit burner testing

Jameson, nice find on that video, I have so many, can’t remember them all. Ideas come fast and I act upon them and do a video and then forget them, LOL. That video did show a way around getting the pot in. Once water boiled, the cone came up with the pot and stayed with it till time for storing it. The rim on that pot was steel and had very little flex when squeezed. The steel rims will show some rust after time so I elected not to use them.

I’m in the process of having my son John take over the manufacturing of all Foster pots. The last thing to teach him is the application of the flat bottoms. This coming week I’ll get with him and show him how. He is the one that consumes the beer, might as well be the one that makes the pots :) The supporting ridgeline can be placed so that the pot is supported 1″ above the StarLyte Burner when using it in a Caldera Cone for Keg. That same location would be ideal for use with a BGET.

Back to “pot halfway out”…we have to keep in mind what Aaron showed us and the results of using 1/2 of a 14gr tablet. His pot was only a short distance down into his protected (cone) pot support. We have lots of combinations/options.

I’ve been using a Trail Deigns GVP for several years now. I had to replace the original Fosters pot once due a pin hole leak in the middle ridge. This pot was one of the earlier ones, before TD and Zelph started adding additional ridges on beer can pots.

Yes, the the top of the pot is quite a bit above the top of the cone. One thing we cannot quantify is the ease of use. The the entire cone and accessories and several Esbit cubes can be stored in the cone, which I keep in a Cuben sack. It is easy to store in my pack.

Click here for some minimal testing against a Lite Trail Esbit system.

Warning: this post was created with an iPhone. May contain typos, misspellings, or grammar errors. Read at your own risk.

Nick, good info on your site…thanks.

I found it interesting what Abela said about switching out the Tri-Wing shortly after using it:

A quote from +John Abela
HikeLighter.Com
http://hikelighter.com/2013/05/16/litetrail-titanium-solid-fuel-cook-system/

”After using the tri-wing for one trip, and knowing that it worked, I switched it out and went back to my BGET esbit tray. Nothing wrong with the tri-wing, but I just prefer this little tray and a dedicated wire pot stand (such as this one) that I had made and is 4.03 grams, so with it and the BGET my stand system is 5.69 grams, compared to the 12.59 grams of the tri-wing stand. It is a more stable system and less likely to have the pot tip over in high wind or if the water is boiling really hard, plus it is a lighter method

This is a quote from Gary Dunkel:

Re: Tri Wing Mod Posted 04/15/2015 19:11:42 MDT by Gary Dunckel (Zia-Grill-Guy)

Yes, Cliff, I have cloned several BGETs using Brian's instructions, and I do have some scraps of ti foil. I guess where I am getting hung up is with the wing stove's tab-to-pot distance in the first place. For me, the sweet spot is to have that distance be 1.25". Slowing down the burn has its place, namely for simmering, but I don't do that with Esbit often. I just want a cleaner 8-9 minute 2-cup boil when I do Esbit, and I have found my way to do that, in a caldera clone with a pot stand and the V-8 can tab holder.

That 1.25" seems to be the sweet spot for me also with both esbit and woodstoves.

Good to know, thanks Brent. I'm going to use a support at that height and try 2 four gram tablets. I did a test earlier today and got 2 cups up to 209 deg. with stating water temp at 70, using 2 four gram. I think 1.25 just might give me the boil with the 2 four gram.

Aha! 1.25" cube top to pot bottom as optimal.

NOW we're getting somewhere. That what this thread can do. We need more of this info.

I'm back home and found a nice digital kitchen thermometer so now I can begin some testing on my own 3 cup Sidewinder system.

Stay tuned…

I think the main reason a 1.25" height would be better with 2-4 gram'ers is that the tab's highest burn rate goes down quickly.
There is however still a lot of burn-time left in them. With the lower height, that lower burn rate is still enough to make a boil happen.
Any higher and the pot is just too high for the tab to heat it up enough.
Then your water temp just goes down while your tab still has 5 minutes of burning left.

I get 2 cups of coldish water to boil within about 1 minute (or less) before the esbit drastically looses it's burn rate.
If there is too much water to get a boil prior to this time, it will never reach boil, (for me anyway).
If it is boiling already, then it will keep that boil for another 4-5 minutes.

I had to suspend testing due to rain/high humidity in the area. High humidity effects testing in a negative way.

I think I'll do some tests with a 1" high pot support to compensate for the drop in burn rate with two 4's side by side. Thanks Aaron for your insight in that burn rate reduction. I saw it happen yesterday when I was able to get one test in before the rains came, using a 1.25" support. Temp of the 2 cups only made it to 203.

At this point 203 degrees is just fine. I use filtered water so I only need to get my water temp up to 180 and I'm good to go. I have chosen my freezer bag meals so that they rehydrate in 5 min without cozy. No, I'm not a gourmet cook :) I whoof it down and then sit back and relax.

Eric, best wishes on your testing with your new digital.

I snuck in one test using a 1" distance to pot. It took what seemed to be forever to consume the fuel and reach a temperature of 210. At that distance it would make for a good simmer height.

I'll be doing my tests 6/14, indoors to avoid any breeze.

My test conditions:

TEMPERATURES/CONDITIONS:
1. water temp before pot is placed on heat (TBD)
2. water at 212 F. or "full boil" (whichever happens first)
3. air temp (I'll shoot for 75 F. by adjusting air conditioning.)
4.altitude (2,200 ft.)
5. pot material (aluminum W/anodized interior)
6. Gram Cracker/BEGIT style tablet holder

CAPACITIES/DIMENSIONS:
1. pot size (3 cup Open country)
2. no. and weight of tablets used (two standard ESBIT tabs)
3. amount of water tested (grams/oz.)
4. distance from tablet top to pot bottom
5. Trail Designe Sidewinder ti stove

TIMING:
1. pot placed on stove to 212 F. reached
2. no lid testing v.s. lidded pot testing

** Pot will be placed on stove at the moment when the entire top of the tablets has been engulfed in flame. This gives optimum heat from the very beginning of the test. It is about the only flame situation that is controllable.

NOTE: Testing will be done Sunday, 6/14. Saturday will be too humid for controlled testing.

Eric, looking forward to your results!

When I did my test (above) I used pen and paper to log the time and temperature data from which the graph was made. I used 15 second intervals, but 30 sec intervals are fine for a graph.

Pretty good tutorial for google spreadsheet/graph. You enter the data in the spreadsheet first, and there is a sub-menu for graphs.

11 tests and 2 boils using two 4 gram tablets. 9 of the test the temperatures average around 204 degrees. 2.5 cup capacity beer can pot was used in all tests. Mechanical kitchen thermometer was used for measurements. 2 esbits placed side by side flat in a stainless steel tray. Only light weight ash was left in tray. Newly arrived esbit was used and had the smell of esbit when box was opened. Previous boxes that I had opened did not have the smell.

Next week I'll do scientific tests with electronic thermometer and show the esbit tray used and pot supports. Will also record time to boil and flame out.

I've been out of action with thinking about this lately, too many work/PhD commitments.

Anyway, great thread everyone!

Some of the results are really interesting. My summary/take home so far:

a) 1.25" seems to be a good height for esbit burning, at least with the 4g tabs
b) everyone seems to like the 4g tabs much better (smell, etc, plus they are more flexible in use)
c) CCones are good, as has been demonstrated in the past. Cone keeps pot or at least water of pot within windscreen and protected.
d) Aaron has good results with bowl shaped pot too, without cone
e) BGET or Red bull type Esbit trays are great, holding in the fluid and allowing complete burns.
f) seems like smaller pots are definitely doing better. Something around 2-3 cups size. Many of them are square or wider.

Aaron's results are quite interesting. My thoughts are that the shape of the bowl is increasing the surface area/volume ratio of the water. In particular, the surface area of water in the 3D plane exposed to the direction of the heat flux of the burning esbit. He is getting great results, despite most of it being outside his windscreen…I suspect that plenty of heat is radiating out of his windscreen and then upwards and catching the sloping bowl sides, transferring to the water.

My next logical thought, is that if there was a caldera cone to fit nicely with that snowpeak Ti bowl…we could be in nirvana. It would need to mate of course to the lip. Cone would be optimised for a BGET (the one with the special corners as Dan describes) at 1.25inches height.

That snowpeak Ti bowl is missing a manufactured lid. I know many on here are happy with MYOG foil lids. I'm not the biggest fan of them, personally.

Out of interest, I did a bit of googling on thermal conductivity of aluminium vs carbon fibre. CF is definitely lower than aluminium. For a lid, you want to minimise thermal conductivity. A CF lid would probably benefit any set up over an aluminium lid. Whether its to a noticeable effect I'm not sure…might not actually be measurable outside of a tightly controlled lab.

http://www.christinedemerchant.com/carbon_characteristics_heat_conductivity.html

Adam, retire early so you can have more fun…. Thanks for the link to the good info on conductivity of the CF. It was an interesting read.

A major finding of this thread is 2,four gram tablets have the energy to boil 2 cups when everything is done right to funnel that energy into a container of water. In my recent tests, I had one boil with a cone and one with a straight wall windscreen.

8 grams of fuel is all that's needed to bring water to an acceptable temperature for many that use filtered water,store bought or from home and only go for short duration hikes.

I suppose I should do some experimenting with 1 half of a 14 gram tablet to see what I can come up with.

I'll also contact Trail Designs to see if they can help us out here with a cone for esbit only use, maybe match one up with a Foster pot.

Adam, Don K. of Four Dog Stove (fourdog.com) makes aftermarket lids for many Snow Peak pots and cups. The one for the SP 1400 pot fits perfectly on the SP bowls.

I'll do some tests with temps and times soon and post them using a 1/2 tab of 7 grams.

Thanks for the tip on lids Gary

Dan; yep its making sense that there is a dedicated Esbit height cone. Probably does make the most sense with a fosters can to start with. The SP bowls are a rare find.

Traildesigns' fosters cans aren't flat bottomed though, are they? Wonder how much difference that would make, assuming that the very bottom can height is still the same.

Adam, I can make an alcohol burner same diameter as the StarLyte XL and reduce the height to 1/2″ so it would be compatible with a cone made for esbit. The cone would be made to hold the pot 1.25″ above the esbit. The cone could then be used with alcohol and esbit.

Here is what the XL looks like and what the pot support looks like that I’ve been using during my last tests:

Let me back up for a second to say: the Caldera Cone can be made to fit inside the Foster pot and the supporting ridge line can be made to support the pot 1.25" above the esbit. I can make the alcohol stove the same height as the Brian Green Esbit Tray or the Trail Designs Gram Cracker.

Yes, that seems logical. Would the entire body of water fall underneath the top of the cone in this case?

If you manage to make this happen, I'll buy one. If I do that, I'll get our Tau2 640 Thermal Imaging camera at work to take some 9 frame per second video of it in action. Be interesting, no doubt…

I'll do everything I can to make it happen just so I can see your camera in action :)

Had to add: Yes, the entire body of water(2 cups) would be within the Cone and the cone would fit inside the pot in the vertical position and leave room for the container that holds the esbit tray.

Here is its first ever image capture:

http://conservationdrones.org/2015/01/22/flir-thermalcapture-setup/

We are mounting them on UAVs and using for many environmental applications. Useful so far.

Can use it handheld or tripod mounted. I can mount it on a tripod and monitor a full boil from start to finish without hassle.

Could be interesting to see exactly where heat flows.

[It doesn't look too fancy, but that thing cost us AUD 12k…and its "only" 640 pixels across. FLIR thermal is not cheap!!!]

Adam, it would be nice to use the imaging unit on Cones that are placed on a revolving platform to see how heat flows within. Look at the photo of the cone that was used with esbit and read what was said about using esbit.

Quoting Stick’s Blog

“Using an Esbit Tablet with the Caldera Cone Sidewinder

Posted on September 19, 2012

Earlier today a user commented on one of my other posts about using Esbit in a Caldera Cone and using a 1.3L cook pot to bring 4 cups of water to a boil. In short, I have managed to get 4 cups of water to a boil using a single Esbit in the Caldera Cone, however, this was in a somewhat controlled environment, and it didn’t boil for very long. So, to better answer this question, I grabbed up my kit, 4 cups of water and my camera and went to my backyard…

As can be seen in the video, in this instance, a single tablet did not manage a full boil in more of a real-life situation. But it came close, in my opinion. If it were me though, and I was using this in the field and actually depended on it, I would have set the system up in an area that was a little better shielded from the wind, unless there is no wind blowing. (And I don’t mean that as anything bad with this system, but I try to pick the best spot for any of my cooking systems, which is out of the wind and somewhere safe, especially with alcohol or Esbit.) Doing this, I believe, would have improved the performance somewhat, however, I would also have to consider that mountain water would likely be slightly cooler than out of my tap too.
Considering this simple test though, if I knew that I had to use this system and needed to boil 4 cups of water, then I would simply allot for slightly more Esbit. If it were during the summer, I would probably opt for 1.5 tablets per 4 cups, or if colder at least 2 tablets per 4 cups. Also, to keep from breaking the type of tablets I used in my video in half, I would seek out a source which sells the smaller Esbit tablets and use them in conjunction with the larger tablets. Although, I could simply stack up 2 of the larger (14 g) tablets, wait for the water to come to a boil and then blow the rest out. The remaining fuel could remain inside the stove since I store it in a plastic bag, however, to make stacking more uniform on the following boil, I would rather just let each tablet burn completely out. (That’s just my choice.)

So far, I have only used this set-up on one trip in which I used it in wood mode for my dinners each night, and Esbit for breakfast each morning. The system worked well for me in this combination. However, for my breakfast I would only boil slightly over 2 cups of water, but the system worked beautifully. The water came to a boil and stayed at a boil for some time (I did not time these boils though, instead I was busy packing up my gear). All in all though, I am very happy with the way that this system works and look forward to using it on lots of other trips! Granted, at 11.5 oz (counting everything, including 3 Esbit tablets) it may not be “UltraLight” for one, but for 2 people, I think that this is a very worthy “UL” system. (And to be honest, I would carry it all again on a solo hike, if the hike was like the recent one I went on…short miles and lots of at camp time…)

My thoughts on Esbit tablets and my personal expectations of them:
I expect a single 14 g tablet to fully boil 2.5 cups of water (at least). So far, these expectations have been well met. Getting 4 cups of water to a boil with a single Esbit tablet is a little different though. Generally, I think that boiling 4 cups of water is the max that a single Esbit tablet can achieve, and this being in optimal conditions. However, there are a number of different stoves out there that burn Esbit, not to mention all the different combinations of stoves, cook pots and windscreens… When considering all of these variables along with each and every situational environmental conditions, it’s hard to make a general assumption. So, what I mean is, I am not an expert in this! I have played around with a few different set-ups, and in my experiences, this is my own personal general assumption.

Sure, I could thermal video some different set ups on a lazy susan.

We did some flying with the Tau 2 at dawn this morning, looking at three different species of Wallabies (one of them quite endangered). Pretty cool :-)