113g Inverted canister stove
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I think these several threads had good info
Sometimes people misinterpret each other, thread goes sideways on irrelevant issues, not to worry…
Sometimes someone says something that’s wrong or off track, eventually things get to a better place
In the end, there are ideas expressed. People can try different ideas that apply to them and find out what works for them.
Jerry, you are absolutely correct.
The volcano stove has been found to have the best preheat coil performance of all the stoves I have played with. It’s diameter is very small, might be the reason for it’s sucess. No spittin and sputterin when the BOSS canister is inverted.
Some, not all of the stoves tested:
I’m a DIY kinda guy that likes tinkering. The Volcano stove has lots of tinkering potential. With the discovery of the BOSS canister fuel winter adventures will be a lot more interesting.
I purchased a BOSS torch with 1 can of fuel, the rest is history. A do-it-yourself project led to a discovery. A discovery I now share.
Can’t have too many canister stoves.
Jerry said:
try putting it in the freezer and see if there’s still pressure. 0 F would need something like 50% propane to still have pressure. You’d have to look at the table in one of Roger’s articles. You’d have to get extremely cold to verify that it’s 98% propane, but you could at least verify it’s not 75% butane 25% propane.
I found this video of a guy that put it in the freezer and tested to see if it would light. I’m not the only one that thinks it to be the “Holy Grail” of canister stove fuel:
Chris said:
Regarding the video: Does this mean you shouldn’t use it with a pressure regulated stove?
My Soto Regulator stove does not work with the BOSS canister. Evidently, all regulator stoves are not made the same. Watch video:
My Polar Vortex stove kit contains the Volcano stove with preheat tube and is regarded as a remote fed canister stove. I recommend using remote fed stoves. The BOSS canister can be used upright or laying flat for a liquid feed mode.
@retiredjerryGood video
If there’s pressure at -10 or -15 F like in the video, then there must be a lot of propane in it. Isobutane boiling temperature is 11 F. n butane is 30 F. propane is -44F.
without doing any calculating, must be at least 50% propane.
I can not imagine camping at -10 or -15 F :)
Camping at those temps is “brutal” for sure. A walk in the woods with a hot coffee break is doable :-) It’s nice to have a 60/40 blend in emergencies. A full canister of BOSS fuel will stop giving off butane for the most part, at below 30F. Propane will then be pressurizing the canister and that is why the container is manufactured to withstand propane. The BOSS torch fuel is awesome for remote fueled canister stoves.
Jerry, why do you think butane and isobutane are both used together in canisters of shaving cream :-) The other day I noticed the canisters of my shaving cream had the same shape top as the BOSS canisters. I looked at the contents and was amused to see propane and isobutane used as the propellant. Jerry, why not just use isobutane? Brings me to think of what was found out about 1 pound tanks of Coleman propane containing butane and propane. Can you direct me to an online source other than BPL articles, that explain why a blend is used ?
my photos of the 2 different shaving cream cans:
I’m just familiar with the physics and techniques, reading Scientific American or whatever. My ex wife is a chemical engineer and I looked at her stuff some… A bit of googling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-gas_processing
There’s a lot of processing of raw gas. Towards the end, it goes through the “NGL recovery” which cools it below ethane boiling point so the “NGL” (mixture of ethane, propane, butane, pentane,…) comes out as a liquid, methane as a gas to the “sales gas pipeline”.
The NGL goes through a train of fractionators. I think they’re the tall columns:
The NGL is cooled and compressed to make it a liquid. It goes into the bottom of a fractionator (column). As the liquid rises through the column, it warms. There are taps at different temperatures. They tap off the gas that boils off at that temperature. When the temperature goes above the propane boiling point, most of the gas at that tap will be propane. There will be some lighter gases, like ethane, that missed the previous tap. There will be some butane even though the temperature is below it’s boiling point.
For the isobutane tap, that will also extract a lot of n butane because their boiling points are similar. What comes out is about 50% isobutane, 50% n butane, plus some other gases.
If you want more pure isobutane, then you have to run it through another fractionator. Maybe the output of that will be an isobutane tap of 80% isobutane, 20% nbutane. And an n butane tape that has 20% isobutane, 80% n butane. Run the 80% isobutane through another fractionator and you’ll have a 95% isobutane tap…
This all is the general idea, I’m no chemical engineer so some of the specifics are not quite right.
The “isobutane” in the shaving cream? It’s cheaper to use the less refined mixture of about 50% isobutane and 50% n butane.
Same thing with “cheap butane” you get at the Korean grocer. Cheapest to use a mixture of about 50% isobutane, 50% n butane.
I read somewhere that isobutane is more useful, so they can “crack” n butane into a mixture of n butane and isobutane, then run it through fractionator(s). Another complexity.
n butane is used as a refrigerant. That has to be fairly pure, so they have to run the gas through many fractionators (a fractionator train) to get the purity needed, and thus it’s much more expensive.
What’s cheap is a mixture. What’s expensive is to keep refining it to get more purity.
All of this uses the same physics as propane preferentially evaporating out of a canister. Except refiners have to have a continuous process where raw material constantly flows in, and various distillates flow out in different taps.
Gases with similar boiling points are difficult to separate. Gases with much different boiling points are easier. Propane is much colder boiling point than butane so the propane listed way above has only 0 to 2.5% butane. There’s more gases like ethane and pentane because they have similar boiling points as propane.
Does that answer your question? Or too much? : )
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