Safest alcohol for stoves – US perspective

If you are looking a low toxicity and availability, one fuel that is often overlooked is hand sanitizer with 70% ethanol.  Basically it is 140 proof compared to Everclear 151 (as Everclear 190 is harder to obtain).  I have found hand sanitizer with 70% ethanol pretty much worldwide.  I suspect that an idea system is a plain cat can stove.  Normally the stove burns too hot and is inefficient, however; the hand sanitizer is a slower burning fuel so they may offset each other and be pretty reasonable.  There has been no studies done on the byproducts of burned hand sanitizer, in my person use, I do not notice any foul smells,but that may not be saying much.

A second option is isopropyl alcohol.  A few of us make soot free, clean burning isopropyl stove (as least as far as leaving residuals on the pot).  Again, I haven’t seen any studies or analysis on the byproducts of burning isopropyl, the assumption is (and it is an assumption) if the flame is burning blue then combustion is complete.  Burning isoproyl does have a distinct odor and it is probably strong that Esbit.  May customers chose an isopropyl stove due to toxicity concerns as well as fuel availability.  My 2 cents.

James Marco, thank you for providing some of that framework. I hadn’t considered extent of the presence of water. I hope that’s all there is to it. Jon Fong, I appreciate your suggestions. I’ll consider using hand sanitizer in a pinch, but I am concerned about the extensive list of additives, all of which comprise 30% of the product, which is significant, and whose byproducts upon combustion may be pretty nasty. As you stated, there are simply not enough data to determine their impact one way or the other. As for using isopropanol, I’m curious as to what it is about stoves designed with the express purpose of being more highly compatible with isopropanol that makes them more suitable. I ask because I don’t know much about the physics of differing stove alcohol models.

@pgasby, I admit I’ll take an efficiency hit in the interest of lowered toxicity.

Do what ever it takes to get Everclear as your fuel. You won’t regret it.

I just had a look at the safety data of one of the local (Australian )  brands :

ethanol >95 %

demineralized water < 5%

However the first brand I found that is mostly Ethanol over there has a 10% of other chemicals.

See :

https://www.luminaproducts.com/pages/safety  (download the MSDS)

from memory the last time I had a look it was around those figures.

(i looked into Marine Supplies, the fuel is still used on boats)