ion stove questions

I got an Ion stove from the BPL online store recently (there is a free reader review of it on this site).

I haven’t used it BPing yet, but have done some basement trials. The intent of this stove is to be a highly efficient stove aimed at smaller solo pots. Many alcohol stoves have a flame spread that’s too wide for a solo pot. As a tradeoff for efficiency, it’s boiling times are higher. In controlled conditions I’ve found it’s boiling times vary widely from 8-15+ min for a pint of 65°F tap water boiled at room temp. Even with priming I still can’t get it to consistantly boil with lower times. It boils a pint on a little over 1/2 ounce of alcohol, so it is efficient. I don’t think it has enough energy to bring a quart of water to boil, it’s more like a giant candle.

For reference, I have a Whitebox alcohol stove (e-bay) that boils a pint in ~4.5 min consistantly using about 3/4 ounce of alcohol and could easily do 1qt boils. It has a wider flame path, almost a little to big for my .9L evernew pot (~5″wide), but it will still boil a pint in Heineken beer can pot in ~5min, albeit with flames going halfway up the sides!

Denatured ethanol is the typical fuel of choice for alcohol stoves as it has a cleaner flame than isopropyl and more energy than methanol. Cost varies but I found it for ~$6 a quart.

Alcohol is lighter than water, IIRC something like .8oz wt per fluid ounce.Alcohol stoves are great for short solo trips as they’re light (typically under and ounce),there’s no canister weight and you carry only the amount of fuel you’ll need. For reference your Pocket Rocket weight is around 3oz, a small cyl of MSR canister fuel weighs about 8oz.

Thanks for the info, so your saying that the ion stove with burn for about 2 hours using about 2 oz of fule, were as my pocket rocket burns 8 oz of fuel in 2 hours! i have another question with how the stove works. Do you pour the alcohol in the bottom of the canister, and then its the fumes comming from the alcohol the you light? and the fire with burn untill the alcohol runs out?
Also, where would you find Denatured ethanol.

If you are boiling in 1L (or larger) increments stick with your canister stove. The Ion will have a hard time boiling 1L at a time. It takes more than 10 minutes for me to boil .5L of water on the Ion.

As to efficency, the Ion is pretty good for an alchohol stove, but butane packs more energy / gram than alchohol. I can boil around 16L of water (in 16-24oz batches) using the Ion with 16oz of fuel if I am being careful about set-up, managing conditions, etc. This pretty much matches what’s on Sgt. Rocks specifications: http://www.ionstove.com/specifications.htm

I use the ion on three season solo trips than are less than a week. For longer duration trips without resupply or if I am cooking for more than 1 person I switch to a iso butane stove.

As to what alchohol.. the more pure, the better. Most people pick up denatured alchohol at hardware stores, or use HEET gas line antifreeze.