The Effect of Cold on Gas Canisters

[Addie Bedford]

Companion forum thread to:

The Effect of Cold on Gas Canisters

[Bruce Grant]

Just wanted to add my voice in saying I thought this was a fantastic article, deciphering and explaining something that affects anyone using a canister stove. I look forward to using this practical information to ensure I don't go without coffee on a cold morning ever again, wondering what the heck is up with my stove and it's full fuel canister.
Thanks for taking the time to research and post this, there is great value in it for me.

[Roger Caffin]

Thanks Jim :-)

However, I do not agree with point 2:
> For temps between -40C (-40F) and -10C (+14F) use 100% propane and
> accept a substantial weight penalty.
My reason is that I have cooked below -10 C many times quite happily.

During the day I keep the canister in my pack next to my water bottles, which are close to my back. That means the canister never gets *too* cold, as the water bottles don't freeze. A good use for body heat which should not be ignored.

I always use a liquid-feed stove in winter, and they can run with a canister temperature down to about -24 C. Not strongly, but they can get going. As I usually manage to keep the canister warmer than the environment, this lower limit is not very limiting in practice/

I leave the canister exposed to the flame radiation and maybe sitting in a bowl of cool water – which is above 0 C of course. This means that the canister never gets too cold while in use. If you do this you MUST monitor the canister temperature for safety of course, but that is rarely a problem.

However, if you have a static situation where the canister is at -30 C (eg left behind in an igloo for several days during a cold spell), then you might have a problem. Will Rietveld uses a propane stove for this very successfully.

Cheers

[Jim Colten]

I've edited my summary to reflect responses from Douglas and Roger. Thanks

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Douglas

> although when it's that cold out I pack the canister in snow to keep it warm.
Now that is something which not many people will think to do! It needs 'warm' snow of course.

I have heard that even in very cold conditions the inside of an igloo can get up to 0 C when people are cooking inside. Will R has experienced this.

Cheers

[Tad Englund]

Jim, a comment about your "#4" =For temps between -10C (+14F) and 0C (32F) you could use MSR IsoPro red canister fuel or Kovea white canister fuel (propane/iso-butane mixtures) with an upright canister.=
I have been at 2000 M on Mt. Rainier, 24*F, with a 1/2 full red MSR canister and it was barely pushing a flame. In 15 min it made my buddy's water was maybe luke warm and the stove flame was getting smaller. This is on the warmer end of the graph but still caused a problem.
We had a MSR Dragon fly as a back up so all was well.

I now use a Coleman Xtreme and a MSR Windpro with an inverted canister and have never had a problem

[Mary D]

One morning last fall, the temp when I woke up was 18*F (-8*C). I hadn't put my MSR canister in my sleeping bag, and I knew I had to warm it up to make it work. I put it inside my coat for about 20 minutes (a somewhat frigid experience at the beginning!) and it worked just fine. However, I also found that I needed to prewarm my butane lighter. Once I got that warm (only about 3 minutes under my jacket), everything worked just fine. I had a piece of thin foam to insulate the canister from the ground, and used a ground-to-pot windscreen that went 3/4 of the way around the canister. This kept the canister from getting cold again while I was heating my water. I of course checked the warmth of the canister at frequent intervals. It stayed cool, but not cold, to the touch.

Frankly, most of the article was obscure to me, since it has been 60 years since my high school physics class. It's good to remind everyone that isobutane canisters need an extra boost of warmth to work in cold weather!

[Eric Blumensaadt]

Articles like these are why a membership in BPL is worth it. BPL has to be the most informative backpacking website going when it comes to objective, science-based equipment testing.

[Jeffs Eleven]

Jim an y'all- thanks!

I didn't get that stuff either but I knew (well, hoped) I wasn't the only one. I love this place cause people aren't afraid to ask the gurus what the Hell their mosaic of charts means- AND they will gladly answer. (except when Sir Nisley gets the same question repeatedly) :)

I guess I'll just stick with the Spider and not look back

[Dale Wambaugh]

Well done and timely— my last trip found me cooking breakfast below freezing and I wondered about stove performance in cold weather.

I wonder if a chemical toe warmer pack might help on a cold morning? They aren't terribly hot (safe on your toes) and might add just enough heat to a canister to safely get a breakfast going.

[James holden]

ive use them and they work fine for me … better than the ole warm with a lighter trick … lol

[Ed Jones]

The application of a 3/4+ circle of reflectix around the stove/pot during use will warm the fuel canister, thus repressurizing it, and increasing the efficiency. The surface temp of the cannister can safely reach 120 degrees. With a 1" minimum gap of windscreen around the pot,the canister has plenty of ventilation room to not overheat. This process allows for full fuel usage, even at the very end of capacity. It shortens cooking time as well.

Cowboy

[Stuart R]

Jim – one small point:

"3. For temps above -25C (-13F) you can use any of the mixtures that contain both propane and iso-butane with a stove designed to burn canister fuel fed to it as liquid (connected to an inverted canister)."

For a liquid fuel stove, the iso-butane is not neccessary. It will work just as well with regular butane. What is required is 25% or more propane.

And a general point: all the temperatures in the article refer to the temperature of the CANISTER. This could be more (or less) than ambient!

[Wesley Witt]

Where can you buy Kovea fuel?

[Roger Caffin]

> Where can you buy Kovea fuel?
That's more difficult. Each shop makes its own buying decisions – often depending on what rep comes around.

CAUTION: if you see a cheap canister with a label saying "Primus, Compagnion, ????" (I forget the last name), DO NOT BUY IT! I tried it and found that the mixture is raw unfiltered gas with a lot of dust in it. My stove blocked up at once – several times. A cheap Chinese import I suspect.

Btw, that is NOT the same thing as the Primus Power Gas canister. The real Primus canisters are good.

Cheers

[Roger Caffin]

Hi all

Someone mentioned that they used to use plain butane canisters on Everest, back in the 'good old days'. Out of interest, I generated a canister pressure chart for the summit of Everest at -28 C (ambient pressure about 300 mBar).
.

.
Indeed, looking at the red curve we can see that it would JUST function at -28 C. That curve starts with 15% propane, but quickly falls to a nearly pure n-butane mix by about 50% remainder. So if the climber could get the canister any warmer than -28 C he would be cooking.

Cheers

[Gaute Lote]

In the article you mentioned the Coleman propane canister with a full weight of gas and canister at 935 g. I had look at Coleman's stoves for these canisters and they do look heavy… No weights on Colemans website (that I could find), but my guess is at least as heavy as your typical white gas stove. Given that my large MSR fuel bottle which full of white gas weighs in at around 875 g (220 g for the bottle w cap and fuel almost to fill line) why would I choose the propane stove?
It seems to me white gas would give me about the same total system weigth and more fuel as a bonus?

[Bailey Gin]

My Coleman remote propane canister stoves (3025-701 and 5452-700) weigh-in at ~19oz each. My Coleman Xtreme Powermax stove converted to straight propane weighs ~16.oz with storage bag and 2 adaptors.

[Frank Oslick]

"Interesting to note that "back in the day", high altitude Himalayan expeditions favored the old Gaz 206 Bluet stoves. These worked fine in this situation because in spite of the cold (well below freezing) the MUCH increased altitude (lower atmospheric pressure) effectively increased the pressure inside the cannister to the point where the butane would still effectively vaporize."

Also interesting how many people think that gas stove performance goes down as altitude increases. Since higher altitude usually means lower temperature the stoves often do not perform as well, but it is because of the temperature, not the altitude. Some "experts" have even tested gas stoves at higher altitudes & then published the "results".

[Scott Bailey]

Users of different gas cylinders (GAZ, MSR, Snow Peak, etc.) should be aware that due to varying ratios of isobutane/propane can have increased BTU output and burn hotter than the oiriginal vendors gas.

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Gaute

> It seems to me white gas would give me about the same total system
> weigth and more fuel as a bonus?

Several reasons why I would stick with LPG:
1) Propane contains more energy than white gas
2) Propane is considerably more efficient than white gas once you allow for priming and operational factors – almost twice as efficient in the field in fact (my records from many years).
3) Propane is Much easier to use in the field.
4) Lighting a propane stove in a small tent in a storm is stress-free compared to priming and lighting a typical white gas stove.

Re the last item: the MSR instructions for the XGK stove explicitly state that priming the stove requires a 'fireball'. Thank you!

Cheers

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Scott

> Users of different gas cylinders (GAZ, MSR, Snow Peak, etc.) should be aware
> that due to varying ratios of isobutane/propane can have increased BTU output
> and burn hotter than the original vendors gas.

I looked at this, and found that the energy differences for typical variations in canister composition were pretty small in practice. That does not worry me.

What can change between the three gases is the flame velocity, and that makes 100% iso-butane canisters a bit tricky on some non-MSR stoves. Iso-butane seems to have a lower flame velocity and if you turn the stove up hard the flames can lift off and blow out sometimes. Shouldn't happen with a 'large' burner.

Cheers

[Bob Gross]

"Re the last item: the MSR instructions for the XGK stove explicitly state that priming the stove requires a 'fireball'."

That's partially true. On a high expedition, three of us were using a new XGK, and due to weather, we had to cook inside the tent vestibule. At the beginning, I had to light it each time with a pretty good flare, and I was so paranoid about burning the tent down that I had a lot of aluminum foil deployed to catch the flare. But then after a few days, I was more practiced about igniting it efficiently without so much flare, and after one week, it was nothing at all. We got so efficient that by the end of the expedition, maybe 11 days, our three-man team had used the same amount of white gas as the best two-man team with the same stove.

–B.G.–

[Brad Groves]

There are situations in which white gas might make more sense or be quite practical. I've camped plenty in 0*F and colder temps, but never needed to cook in my tent.

Regarding "once you allow for priming and operational factors," I've noted that in the past those cited operational factors included letting the stove run between meal courses or some such thing. That's simply not fuel efficient or necessary in my experience. Priming uses remarkably little fuel.

I'm beginning the process of comparing several sub-11oz WG stoves along with remote-canister gas for those interested in winter stoves. Unfortunately, some of the stoves won't be available until winter so it will be awhile before I have more data & info…

[Elisa Umpierre]

LOL, I scrolled to the end of the article looking for the same three sentences.

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