Better Esbit Ti Folding Stove idea

"Can't speak for the history of the ti wing design but overall Esbit's cooking systems do not make best use of their fuel."

Think about it. That is Esbit's marketing strategy. Get the user to burn up their special fuel faster, so that promotes more fuel sales. Also, the Esbit systems are optimized for Esbit fuel cubes, so you are unlikely to burn something else in there.

Let's spin this around the other way. Just suppose that there was a special Esbit cube that had roughly twice the cooking energy. Either it would go for twice as long or else boil water much faster, and it was in the same half-ounce cube. You would pay more for it, wouldn't you? How much more? Everybody would easily pay 10% more for it. A few people would pay 25% more for it. Would you pay 100% more for it?

–B.G.–

@ Ian "They advertise .5oz of fuel to boil 16oz of water. My experience has been that .5oz is overkill but I'm having a hard time getting the job done with .25oz. Maybe .375oz is the magic number? Still shooting for .25 oz of fuel though this may be ambitious for an UL kit."

I use Esbit quite often on extended trips. I am usually using a Caldera Cone with a 900 ml Evernew squat pot. I find that with this setup, I can heat up, but not boil 2 cups of water with a half tab (for coffee and hot cereal in the morning, for example). I like to put the bottom of my pot 1.5" above the top of my Esbit tab, but have not done any extensive testing of this. For my typical dinner (4 cups of water for 2 cups of tea and rehydrating/cooking a meal), I find that 1.5 tabs works well. I pour off my two cups of water for tea when the water is hot but not yet a rolling boil, then have enough heat left to bring things to a boil and even simmer a minute or two before it goes into the cozy. So 2 tabs or 1 oz of Esbit a day works well for my basic needs, with a couple extra tabs carried for extra hot drinks as needed.

"I feel that the major dimension to be concerned with is from the burning cube to the pot bottom, but even that can vary depending on whether you are trying to get fuel efficiency, cooking speed, or whatever."

I was totally talking about fuel-to-pot differences, assuming that there was adequate air supply. Four Dogs has gone into airflow issues and developed a fan-blade like cut in the bottom of the burner to aid combustion.

Note that the Esbit folding stove and the flat sheet metal emergency stove have slot vents around the cube (I don't get the arrows in the illustration)

I use a wing stove to make hot drinks, but I was never to worried about efficiency. The question begs to be asked and I'm sure we would see the same sort of issues as with alcohol and canister stoves on flame pattern and height. As far as windscreen design, I doubt there is much better than a cone, but I would prefer something dead simple that would drop inside the pot.

I wonder if louver style vents would help draw air in and up to the pot? A DIY builder could sculpt depressions in a block of wood to hammer aluminum flashing into to create the shapes. That should require just a simple cut in the metal to start the vent opening.

Or how about a tiny low speed fan under the burner, like an electronics cooling fan with the revolutions turned down?

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Well, I thought that I would sit down and look at the numbers and compare methanol to Esbit. I took the Stored Energy values from zenstoves.net. I can boil 4 cups of 70 F water using 30 ml of DA. From this spreadsheet it says that 1 tablet of Esbit has 93% of the stored energy of 30 ml of methanol.

Then I scaled the energy and would estimate that you could get up to about 202 F with Esbit. Of course, this is assuming that the stove efficiencies are the same. Again, this is all just number crunching but it seems reasonable (of course, my math may not be correct). On a good day, I can get 4 cups of 70F water up to just short of 190 F. Maybe there is a way to design an Esbit stove that is more efficient than an alcohol stove. My 2 cents – Jon

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Keep in mind that a good alcohol stove runs in the 55 to 60% efficiency. +80% sets the bar pretty high. My 2 cents – Jon

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"Sign me up for the esbit cult, but only if there's a discount on bulk fuel purchases :)"

I'm still looking for a place to buy it by the pallet.

–B.G.–

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Just start with ice water. That's how you calibrate a thermometer anyway. My 2 Cents – Jon

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