White Box Stove Ethanol vs Methanol

I have tested 3 White Box stoves now, with the 'methylated spirits' available here (which is supposedly mostly ethanol, plus some denaturants, colours and odors) and this fuel is simply too 'boisterous' for the stove. It burns yellow, huge flame spread that creeps up the side of pots, and somewhat sooty. For the record, this is the only stove where I have had a problem with the cheap fuel, and methanol burns just fine. Two other Australians have had similar problems with the same fuel, so definitely be wary if you're thinking about using one of these stoves 'down-under'. Make sure you have access to some methanol…

In other stoves I see the same pattern that you do. The ethanol based fuel is more efficient than the methanol.

Hi Alison,

From what I have noticed in all alcohol stoves that I have tested, ethanol/ high ethanol content 95%+ denatured alcohol does burn with a more 'boisterous' yellow flame than Methanol. The methanol flame does look a nice pretty blue but this does not in anyway mean that Methanol it is a more efficient fuel than ethanol.

Fact: Methanol has 26% less heating energy in it than Ethanol.

From my understanding of the laws of physics and thermodynamics methanol under the same conditions cannot better than ethanol. In that I have noticed that methanol performs closer to ethanol than 26% difference in heating content, in the tests above it performed 15% less than ethanol, that is probably because of the slower less 'boisterous' methanol flame having more time to loose its heat in the the base of the pot.

Tony

I agree, in theory ethanol should be more efficient. Period. In reality I could not achieve a boil using whatever witches brew they add to our ethanol to 'denature' it, and even using a large diameter pot. I am puzzled by this as every other stove I've tested runs better our denatured ethanol, compared to methanol. This includes all the other pressurised stoves such as the Gram Weenie and Mini Bull Designs. It would be nice if we could 'swap' fuels to play with, but I don't think IATA would be very happy about that!

Hi Allison,

The Alcohols that I used in the tests above are Absolute Ethanol 99.8% pure and 99.8% pure Methanol. When modeling denatured I used mixtures of the two rather than what I could buy at the shops, I get nearly a straight line from 100% ethanol to 100% methanol with mixtures of 100/0, 75/25, 50/50, 25/75 and 0/100, which is what I would expect.

The denatured or Methylated Spirits that I use in tests is cheap Black and Gold brand that I get at my local supermarket. It performs nearly as good as the pure ethanol that I use.

I do not know what is going on with your tests, they do not match mine. I am interested finding out more to, could you supply me with some info on what brand denatured or a data sheet on it and your test methods.

Tony