Carrying alcohol

[Einstein X]

For many years I have been an ESBIT convert. Lately however I have started to become annoyed about the black residue on my pot, which makes everything in one of my stuffsacks dirty. So I have been thinking of changing over to alcohol.

Now recently I read a post here saying that the author wanted to use a maximum of 14g of alcohol in order to get the same weight performence as ESBIT. Good idea, but how the h"&l do you measure exactly 14g of alcohol in the field? On my kitchen sink it is easy with the help of a digital scale. Using ESBIT in the field it is also easy to exactly meassure 14g of ESBIT every time, since ESBIT is solid.

So what to do with alcohol? Taking 14g dropper bottles would work, but you'd certainly loose your weights advantage over ESBIT. Eyeballing it, you'd never even come close to 14g, so how do you use small amounts of alcohol in the field?

Eins

[Mike Klinefelter]

Take a look at the caldera cone kits that are sold at Traildesigns.com or antigravity gear. They come with a small measuring cup, the type that are used for medications like cough syrup. The cup is graduated in ml, oz, and cc, and holds 30 ml/cc or 1 fl. oz. If you want to use weight of the fuel it would be easy enough to figure out at home the weight of each ml or fl. oz. and then measure in the field. Hope this helps.

[John Brochu]

The density of ethanol is .789 so 14 grams is just about 18ml. Find a tiny plastic cup, maybe something like the one that comes with Nyquil, and mark it at 18ml.

[Mike Hinsley]

The simplest solution is to have a burner that is marked with a 14g line or simply only has a 14g capacity.

I made a little vapour pad stove in a tiny vaseline container (about 1.5" dia) and that just about holds 15g when you can see liquid on the top of the pad.

If there is a few g of over-fill it remains in the wadding (glass-fibre tissue paper) ready for the next time…

…

One trick I've used with Esbit is to do an alcohol stove burn every so often on the cooking pot (often with an emptyish pot). The black residue is often partly burnt fuel and a suitable flame will get rid of most of it so that the rest will brush or wash off.

I too became a little ticked off with residue issues…

[Einstein X]

Great thing about this forum is how people always seem to be able to come up with ideas that are so simple I could have thought of them myself.

Only problem I would have with a measuring cup would be the lack of mulitfunctionality of it. Now, I recently got an 'Ivootje' which basicaly is a medicine cup used by several people of a local hiking club as a means to drink drams of whisky. This could be used to measure 14g/18ml of alcohol. Only problem is I will have to use methanol to get the most BTU's out of my alcohol and since methanol is poisonous I think it's not really a good idea to drink whisky out of the same cup I measure alcohol with.

Your ideas have insipered me though to use the cap of the bottle i use to transport the alcohol as a measuring device and I just found out that 3 standard soda bottle caps are about 14g (and also cause me to spill some alcohol, pouring from the big, two pint bottle).

Ideally I'd need an 18ml cap to close me alcohol bottle.

Thanx so far, any more good ideas out there?

Eins

[josh wagner]

if you could find 1 instead of 12? maybe contact nalgene

http://www.coleparmer.com/catalog/product_view.asp?sku=0608725

another choice:

http://sciencekit.com/vials%2C-snap-on-cap%2C-plastic/p/IG0025962/

maybe contact your local high school and see if the chemistry teacher has a vial you can get on the cheap

[Linsey Budden]

Before you commit to your alcohol storage device, check out rumrunnerflasks.com , home of the very inexpensive and ultralight 8oz [capacity](or 16oz or 32oz) collapsible flasks.

[Rog Tallbloke]

I use a small 6ml syringe for filling my alcohol stoves. It gives good control for the tiny amounts needed for priming, and allows precise measurement so fuel isn't wasted.

As far as dual use is concerned, I suppose it would come in handy for irrigating an eye with a speck of dirt in it, or administering anti venom intravenously.

On a side note, a poster above talked about methyl alcohol. Most alcohol sold is mostly 90+% ethyl plus a small amount of methyl to avoid drinking alcohol tax.

If anyone finds a way to seperate them, let me know. ;-)

[Elliott Wolin]

Someone else (not sure where) posted a solution to how to measure alcohol: don't!

Bring a syringe or something that can suck alcohol out of the stove. Pour in more than you need. Snuff out the stove when you are done cooking, quickly suck the remaining alcohol out before it evaporates, and then put it back into your alcohol container.

He claims to recover all but one or two ml of the alcohol, the stove never goes out before it should, and he never has to bother with measurements.

I plan to give this a try on my next trip.

[Christopher Holden]

http://www.packafeather.com/fuelbottle.html
This site mentions using a 20oz bottle. I didn't need all that fuel, so I found the 12oz bottles work well. I was going to look for something in the 6-8oz range, but then I found the Caldera Cone (and later upgraded to Ti-Tri). As long as I can block the wind, my Brasslite 600ml mug and stove/cone can boil 2 cups of water on a 1/2oz of S-L-X (denatured alcohol). I use the 4oz bottle and cap they provided and it works well. I can suggest the bottle kit above for those using alcohol for groups or for solo trips longer than a couple of days.

[Einstein X]

Again, great ideas folks. However I don't feel much for carrying my alcohol in idividual 14g portions because as i mentioned earlier i'd loose the weight advantage over ESBIT.

The syringe seems like a good idea. I think it was me talkin about methyl alcohol cuz my locale outdoor store sells bottles of pure methanol in 2 pint bottles and since methanol has the most BTU's I'm planning on using it. That would also make the suggested dual use options not possible cuz methanol is poisonous I'd certainly don't want to use the syringe to spray sth into my eyes.

The suggested packfeather fuelcap or using a syringe to suck unneeded alcohol back into the container also seems pretty good. Although I do wonder if the packfeather thingy won't allow alcohol vapour to evaporate from your bottle.

Food for thought, thanx.

Eins

[Jason Griffin]

Quote:

As far as dual use is concerned, I suppose it would come in handy for irrigating an eye with a speck of dirt in it, or administering anti venom intravenously.

Not to sound too harsh or blunt. But the first time you lose your eyesight or become septic or get a wonderful case of toxic shock syndrome you'll probably change your tune on using a syringe as multi-use gear for medical purposes.

Most likely a very bad idea.

[Christopher Holden]

Eins,
The bottle gets a pretty good seal. I've left it in my truck for days at a time when the weather here is 90-100F outside, even hotter inside when the windows are up and the engine off. No noticable loss, unlike many other containers I've used.
Chris

[Christopher Holden]

Eins,
The bottle gets a pretty good seal. I've left it in my truck for days at a time when the weather here is 90-100F outside, even hotter inside when the windows are up and the engine off. No noticable loss, unlike many other containers I've used.
Chris

[Tony Beasley]

Hi Eins,

>since methanol has the most BTU's I'm planning on using it

Methanol actually has the lowest BTU's of the most common alcohols used in backpacking stoves. Find an Denatured alcohol with the highest amount of ethanol. 90%+ ethanol denatured will leave pure methanol for dead for performance.

Tony

[Rog Tallbloke]

> Not to sound too harsh or blunt. But the first time you lose your eyesight or become septic or get a wonderful case of toxic shock syndrome you'll probably change your tune on using a syringe as multi-use gear for medical purposes.

Of course, denatured alcohol will turn you blind, if you drink too much of it ;-)

Can't see 0.1ml alcohol residue doing anything much though, since it's used in hospitals the world over as an antiseptic, I can't see that there would be much in the way of anything living inside the syringe day to day either, for the same reason.

You are more likely to suffer infections, stomach complaints etc if you take an overly anti-germ attitude than you are if you toughen your constitution IMO.

[Jason Griffin]

I've seen plenty of patients become septic from I.V. administration of fluids or drugs even when new, sterile equipment was used with proper aseptic technique, the risk of bacteria forming in that syringe between uses is very real. In addition to that if your denatured alcohol contains methanol, flushing that through your eye could very quickly lead to blindness. Methanol is very toxic to the optic nerves; even when administered intravenously and not directly into the eye.

To each his own though.

A syringe is a pretty good idea for dispensing precise amounts of the alcohol though. I like the little 30 mL med cup with a squeeze bottle of alcohol. Lets me dose it out pretty precise. I never could get past the nasty smell of the esbit tabs so if I just put up with a little extra weight of alcohol.

[Bill B]

Why not just mark the outside of the storage bottle with a pen

[Rog Tallbloke]

> In addition to that if your denatured alcohol contains methanol, flushing that through your eye could very quickly lead to blindness.

I wasn't considering flushing my eye with denatured alcohol, but using a syringe which had been used to dispense it. So, an empty syringe which has recently contained denatured alcohol is going to be pretty sterile anyway, and the 0.01ml of methyl alcohol which might remain is not going to be causing major damage to my optic nerves or sending me blind all of a sudden when diluted with 5.99ml of nice clean water is it?

[Elizabeth Rothman]

"I made a little vapour pad stove in a tiny vaseline container (about 1.5" dia) and that just about holds 15g when you can see liquid on the top of the pad."

I'd like to see a picture of your vapour pad stove, and perhaps of the tissue paper you mention, so I can figure out the American equivalents. Sounds very compact and tidy!

[Jason Griffin]

Come on now? I wouldn't expect that you would flush your eye out with strait denatured alcohol… ;)

I looked up a few sources and from what I read 4 mL is sufficient to cause blindness. Chances are probably low that you would have any permanent damage from the residue left over in the syringe but chances are probably good that it would sting like a ticked off honey bee; maybe. I wouldn't want to try it to find out.

As a disinfectant, denatured alcohol contains 90% ethanol which is plenty high enough to kill most microbes. However there is also the variable of dwell time. I remember back when I was taking microbiology that we had a spill of e-coli on the floor and our professor dumped 70% ethanol all over it but left it there for 10 minutes. The sources are hard to come by but I found a few that stated 2 minute dwell times on the skin is sufficient for disinfecting the area. Hence the reason we have to let the site air dry rather than wiping it dry. Rubbing alcohol forms are decent for stuff like starting IV's and doing blood draws. However when we truly want something to be sterile we use chloraseptic and scrub the area for at least 1 minute; then follow up with betadine. Remember that denatured alcohol evaporates very quickly and that the amount of time you have it in that syringe may not be enough time to kill what may have found it's way there; you could just be spreading it around in the syringe. Also, alcohol is completely ineffective against spores such as clostridium difficile spores. Those have to be physically removed from the area; hence all the scrubbing of surgical and sterile sites from inside to outside.

I would just be wary of it, that's all I'm trying to say. If you had to administer anti-venom or flush your eye with a previously used syringe then I guess that's what you have to do but weighing the risk/benefit would be a good thing to do first. An extra sterile syringe for a dedicated purpose is very little weight that is well carried.

Wish you the best and welcome your reply but I probably won't post anymore on the topic because we have thoroughly hijacked this thread…..sorry to the OP.

[Joe Kuster]

Let me be extremely explicit here: tiny residue in a needle can kill, blind or make you incredibly sick, regardless of how you are exposing yourself to it (vein, intramuscular, open wound, eye or using as an oral rinse tool). We're not just talking sterility but chemical contamination.

I also beleive you are getting your types of alcohol and their properties confused. What you are using isn't the type that is used to sterilize stuff unless that is expressly what it is marked for. The impurities in many other types of alcohol or the off the shelf stuff are extremely toxic.

And yes some forms of alcohol (which you happen to be talking about) will cause blindness – in minute trace amounts when exposed directly to the eye. It only takes a small amount through the bloodstream where it's nice and diluted in your body, so the direct route — *shudder*.

It's obvious you've never had a unfriendly chemical exposed to your eye. Good for you, on the other hand I have, and it turned the entire protective coating on my eye into a white gelatenous goo. I was in agonizing pain almost instantly and even after rinsing it for an hour it was burning intensly. I couldn't see well out of my left eye for around 3 days. I was very lucky to keep my sight.

It did that with a single ultra fine drop of mist that splashed back from assisting to administer an off the shelf ear cleaning solution…. well under 1ml

[Rog Tallbloke]

A gram of experience is worth a pound of theory. I just filled my syringe with denatured, emptied it again, filled it with preboiled and cooled water, and squirted some in my eye.

I'm happy to report no stinging, blindness, oozing white goo or any other ill effects.

:-)

[Jason Griffin]

That was brave…… glad you can still see.

[Rog Tallbloke]

Well, you guys had me worried, so to be honest, I did rinse the syringe a couple of times with the boiled water before I used it.

Normally if I got a bit of grit in my eye, I'd just dip my cupped hands in a mountain stream and have a splash, so I guess using an alcohol sterilised syringe with boiled water is overkill really. ;-)

Anyway, back on topic, a good tip for carrying alcohol in winter is to keep a small bottle of it in your shirt pocket to cook your evening meal with, or in your sleeping bag to cook breakfast with. Warm fuel is so much easier to ignite.

[Author]

Posts