DIY Alcohol Stove Design — Basic Considerations

Ultra,

What type of fuel are you using?

HJ
Adventures in Stoving

Are you sure you weren’t testing a wood burning stove with that pot in the picture? ;)

HJ
Adventures in Stoving

I go back and forth between ordinary SLX denatured and HEET, whatever I have on hand at the moment.

BM

"I go back and forth between ordinary SLX denatured and HEET, whatever I have on hand at the moment."

The only thing that I like about HEET is the plastic container that it is in. I store S-L-X in mine.

–B.G.–

Mushers up here buy HEET by the case and use it on the trail. They use a metal baking dish, a handful of fiberglass insulation and put a large pot over it to melt snow to broth the dogs. They don't care about efficiency or weight very much because they can have food (4-legged and 2-legged), fuel, batteries, etc, dropped at each village along the way, so they resupply every 150 miles or so (every 1-2 days).

It's all about reliability, simplicity and minimal labor. The dogs rest about half the time. The musher, though, is lucky to sleep 2-3 hours a night for 10 to 15 days.

Ultra Magnus wrote: > I go back and forth between ordinary SLX denatured and HEET, whatever I have on hand at the moment.

Both of those burn cleanly in the majority of stoves I’ve tested. The only stoves that I had any sooting problems with SLX or HEET were really hot, fast stoves. More typical stoves do very well with SLX and/or HEET.

Yeah, I’m testing with high ethanol content denatured. It produces soot in most every stove that I’ve tested, some quite a lot of soot as you can see from the previously posted photo. I’m still curious to see what will happen with Everclear which has no denaturants in the very same stove.

HJ
Adventures in Stoving

David Thomas wrote: > Mushers up here buy HEET by the case and use it on the trail. They use a metal baking dish, a handful of fiberglass insulation and put a large pot over it to melt snow to broth the dogs. They don’t care about efficiency or weight very much …

Very interesting. Thank you for posting that.

I have often heard that mushers use alcohol “stoves,” but I had often wondered why they would do so in such cold weather where alcohol has trouble vaporizing. It makes sense though if they’re using in essence a simple wick stove (fiberglass insulation + baking dish). It also makes sense in that such a stove is “fire and forget.” One just dumps in the alcohol, fires it up, and goes on to other things. There’s not a lot of set up, no pumping, no priming, no adjusting, etc. Simple, minimal labor, and it should work reasonably well if you have copious amounts of alcohol and don’t need to have the most efficient set up.

HJ
Adventures in Stoving

David Thomas wrote: > … don’t me started on how it was actually chemical engineers who won the war.

Say, David, just what is it that you do? ;)

Thanks for the octane insights.

HJ
Adventures in Stoving

HJ, make sure that you add in a pinch of tetraethyl borane.

That was the secret sauce for the JP-7 fuel used by the SR-71 Blackbird.

–B.G.–

>"Say, David, just what is it that you do? ;)"

I design the clean-ups of contaminated soil and groundwater. A ton of service stations throughout California when I was younger than any of us are now. As a senior engineer now, I mostly work on former Air Force Bases, railyards, etc, and other facilities with 2 to 7 million gallons of fuel floating on the groundwater.

In my mind, the idea billing hour is one spent on a conference call, with the cell phone on mute, calling out, "Hey Bear, I don't want to surprise you, bear!" as I hike up the hill on some Alaskan trail and occasionally chiming in on the discussion.

Anyway, back to WWII: The Germans, who were arguable better chemists, got all occupied trying to make liquid fuels from coal and tasked how to kill 6 million Jews. While American ChemE's sat around in their un-bombed offices, with a continent worth of natural resources, and added various steps to the refining process to make very high-octane aviation gasoline. As a result, the P-51 and other planes could have very high-compression, high-effiency engines, and MUCH longer range than pistion-engine planes on the German side. It was what enabled the bombing campaign against Germany because the long-range bombers could then have fighter escorts for the whole run.

At least, that's what the ChemE profs at UC Berkeley told us.

I've never seen an SR-71 on the wing – just on static display in Seattle and in DC. But I've seen a lot of U-2s take off from Beale AFB (one of many AFBs I've worked on with 2 million gallons of fuel floating on the groundwater). It was very interesting to hear from Alaskan AF retirees who worked during the Cold War as the planes were coming and going on missions.

I didn't know about tetraethyl borane. Yet another chemical to google.

Anyway, back to WWII: The Germans, who were arguable better chemists, got all occupied trying to make liquid fuels from coal and tasked how to kill 6 million Jews. While American ChemE’s sat around in their un-bombed offices, with a continent worth of natural resources, and added various steps to the refining process to make very high-octane aviation gasoline. As a result, the P-51 and other planes could have very high-compression, high-effiency engines, and MUCH longer range than pistion-engine planes on the German side. It was what enabled the bombing campaign against Germany because the long-range bombers could then have fighter escorts for the whole run.
At least, that’s what the ChemE profs at UC Berkeley told us.

Makes sense. And apparently the Germans were pretty good at the whole coal-to-liquid fuel thing. My understanding is that they basically ran the majority of their war effort off of it.

In my mind, the idea billing hour is one spent on a conference call, with the cell phone on mute, calling out, “Hey Bear, I don’t want to surprise you, bear!” as I hike up the hill on some Alaskan trail and occasionally chiming in on the discussion.

OK, that’s pretty sweet. It’s Christmas, so I’ll try not to hate you for having a better life than me. :) (Just envious; don’t mind me)

HJ
Adventures in Stoving