Why Isn’t There an UL Alcohol Type Stove that Bruns White Gas?

[Tony Wong]

I was just reflecting on my 2011 JMT trip and how difficult it was to find Esbit at the stores.

Some had alcohol for sale.

Then I was thinking, if I were traveling internationally, it might be difficult to find either of these.

However, it seems that you can find gasoline everywhere in the world.

Often it is sighted that gas/white gas has the most energy vs. other fuels like alcohol and esbit.

Given that white gas/gasoline/petroleum seems to give you the most heat output, why hasn't someone created a lightweight alcohol type stove that runs on white gas/petroleum that would work in something like a Caldera Cone or any other system using alcohol with a windscreen????

I am sure that there is some obvious reason why or we would see light weight stoves like these on the market.

I cannot be the only person to have thought of this…

Would be nice if there was something that used white gas that did not require pumps, priming, repair kits, and are so heavy.

Anyone know why we don't have UL stoves that run off of gas without the need for pumps and lot of moving parts?

-Tony

[Bob Gross]

Your ponderings seem naive.

I can think of very few exceptions to this, but nearly all white gas stoves need a good deal of pressurization in order to get the right fuel/air mixtures for them to burn efficiently. Then, when you achieve that pressurization, nearly always it takes a moderately heavy vessel to contain it safely.

Not all white gas stoves require pumps, and most have only a few moving parts. I've never carried a repair kit.

You can get around all of this, but it probably won't have much efficiency, and that would negate the entire purpose.

–B.G.–

[d k]

Several years ago, one of the big companies (I think it was MSR) had a prototype non pressurized white gas type stove that used a ceramic filter that somehow created pressure via capillary action as the gas burned. The military was given some to try out with their fuel. But it never made it into the market; what I heard was that they had problems with the filter getting clogged. I had such high hopes when I first heard about it, but it never came to be. I think that Hikin' Jim has one of the prototypes and brought it to the GGG a year or two back, but I missed seeing it.

[Paul Hatfield]

White gas has multiple meanings.

Zelph's Venom Super Stove can run on Coleman fuel (if the stove is cut down first).

[David Thomas]

Tony, I'd rephrase your Q as, "Why can't I put white gas in an alcohol-type UL stove?" Which also begs the question, "What happens if you use alcohol in a WG stove?"

I've got a few theories (WG has a much lower flash point suggesting a more dangerous situation), but I don't know because I've never tried it. Maybe I should put on my nomex tomorrow and try it out.

Clearly, pressurized stoves can pre-mix the vaporized fuel and air, resulting in more complete combustion, higher temperatures, and greater fuel efficiency.

Clearly, unpressurized stoves can be much, much lighter.

But if you accepted lower efficiency, could you use the more widely available WG or mo-gas in a very UL set up while retaining your eyebrows? I don't know.

[Roger Caffin]

You can use white gas in an alky-type stove, but it is going to burn erratically as the different components flash off, and it is going to be rather smokey as the flame won't get enough oxygen.

When Sue and I walked the GR10 (long distance route) along the Pyrenees, we met a couple who looked very despondent. They were clutching their XGK and asking where they could buy fuel. The high mountain villages did not have gas stations, but even the tiniest little stores often had canisters of gas. Well, that's what the customers mostly wanted, after all.

As fo finding white gas – well, leaded petrol might be found, but kero or diesel are far more likely to be available in remote places. Kero for lighting and cooking, and diesel for motors. It doesn't evaporate away like petrol.

Cheers

[Derek M.]

I'm curious to know what happens when you try to burn gasoline in a "pressurized" alcohol stove like a penny stove?

Obviously, this has been tried before and doesn't work well, but can anyone tell me why it fails? Does it not get enough air? Does it explode? Is it just really inefficient? What's the hang up?

[Stuart R]

First you have to realise that liquids don't burn, only vapor burns. If a liquid is below it's boiling point, only a small amount of vapor will be gven off.

Alcohol has a low boiling point, so enough vapor is given off to start burning and the heat of the flame soon gets the liquid boiling.
Gasoline has a higher boiling point, so this does not work as well.

2nd, a fuel vapor needs oxygen to burn cleanly.

Alcohol is already partially oxdised (hence its low heat output), so it doesn't need much oxygen to burn.
Gasoline needs lots of oxygen and one way to mix the oxygen with the vapor is with a fine jet of vapor which sucks air into a burner head where the vapor and oxygen mix

[James Marco]

White Gas needs a heck of a lot less pressure than alcohol. The vapour pressures are too different. Yes, a few pressurized stoves will burn 180 proof alcohol with modifications. This makes them unsuitable for burning WG…lots of dirty yellow flames. You need to replace the jet minimally, often something with a preheat coil, not a single line, is needed, too. The jet supplies small, vaporized fuel ammounts in lots of air. This is the same as a canister jet mixing large amounts of air. Genrally, the heavier the fuel, the more heat is needed to get it going. So, methane,ethane,butane and propane are easy. Alcohols evaporate to form this gas. As does pentane, hexane, septane, octane, etc… Generally WG contains almost NO octane. Alcohol is partially combusted already, if you will allow this anology. It does not have the same energy, but has many of the same characteristics as hydrocarbons, but only about 1/2 as much energy.

The SVEA 123 series was the most popular stove out there with no pump. A regular alcohol stove produces about 1000BTU. On low, the SVEA can *just* hit that. Depending on ambient temps, between 8-15g/l have been reached leaving this stove as efficient as any. Nobody likes to carry the 19oz, though. The cup weighs another 2+oz. This will burn acetone, benzene, regular unleaded and some other stuff besides WG. Though WG is the optimal fuel for it. Acetone burns too hot and will trip the saftey after 10 minutes. Auto gas will burn slow.

Zelphs stoves do not burn efficiently using WG. Most of the fuel is simply wasted so this is no real savings due to inneficiency.

Methanol/ethanol are uasy to combust because they do not require a lot of air mixing. So, in small unpressurized stoves, they work fine. Do a search on line for "alcohol coil" stoves, way too many to list. The so-called pressurized stoves we usually see are th ones like the penny stove et al. These are not true presurized stoves. Note that the coil stoves are somewhat dangerous, many are simply capped off with no saftey valves to relieve excess pressure in case of a blockage. Not recommended except for experimentation under controlled circumstances. Unless you are a good machinist, I would not fool with these. There are some nice ones out there, though. No moving parts, except maybe a valve, makes these attractive from a maintenece stand point.

Most of the work on stoves has been done. The fuels have chemical charateristics which *must* be allowed for. It is difficult to change the way a manufacturor thinks about the stoves. They do little active research. Capilary Action (old technology) was developed by MSR and makes the "disk" stoves for the military, though it is difficult to get them to admit it. It runs on JP4, not WG, I believe, though it may burn it. (CLEAN, CLEAN fuel.) Presurized fuel through a bunch of these makes them rather explosive, think BIG fireball. Not available for the camper, generally.

[Ken Thompson]

"Alcohol has a low boiling point, so enough vapor is given off to start burning and the heat of the flame soon gets the liquid boiling.
Gasoline has a higher boiling point, so this does not work as well."

Like tossing a match into a bucket of gasoline on a really cold morning. Nothing.
Gasoline vapor though, BOOM.

[Bob Gross]

"Like tossing a match into a bucket of gasoline on a really cold morning. Nothing.
Gasoline vapor though, BOOM."

Things must be slow in Humbolt County.

–B.G.–

[Ken Thompson]

It's Humboldt Bob. Actually that was when I was working at a shop in San Diego. Customers loved that demo.

[USA Duane Hall]

Yeah, I was out in the garage again on Saturday playing with my stoves, thinking too of some simple stove. Svea 123, Optimus 8/8R's. Self pressurizing, but heavy for UL bping, unless you go retro. My penny stove yesterday was actually way faster than the modified Starlyte, but by the time you add the weight of the priming fuel to it, took more fuel. Fun to experiment.
Duane

[Dan Yeruski]

James Marco bite your toungue :-)

Watch the video on how to modify a Super Stove for use with Coleman Fuel. This technology has been around for a while, look at the date when the video was posted.

10ml, 1/3oz will boil 2 cups of 35 degree beginning temp of water in 35 degree air temp. Now I say to Marco….is that efficient?

The Venom Super Stove can be modified also for the use of Coleman Fuel. It's all on my website. I'll post a link later for those that are interested in real stove stuff. :-) For now watch how the Budlite Super Stove burns Coleman Fuel.

Tony, I"ll send you a complimentary Venom Super Stove that's been modified.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KFjFQr00TE#t=223

.

[Dan Yeruski]

This one is for David Thomas and Roger:

Venom Super Stove using HEET in the "Red" bottle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gqWJvYtcTA

Now Roger and David tell us why the Venom Super Stoves can burn these fuels.

[Tony Wong]

Dan,

Space Madness I tell you….white gas in an alcohol stove!

I checked out your videos…genius!

Just ordered your stove with the mod for white gas, plus I decided to get your burner for my Bushbuddy.

And to think, I only had a couple of stoves before meeting you. :)

I think that I am on my way to developing a stove fetish now.

Thanks!

Tony

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

Tony,

Passive white gas stoves can be built (been there, done that). In my opinion, these are some of the things that I observed:

1) Refueling – WG typically isn't sold in small volumes so what do you do with the excess?
2) I worry enough about people using alcohol incorrectly. WG is way worse
3) While fuel efficient, it burned slow in my system
4) I thought that it stank, not sure what other people found

At the end of the day I dropped developing a WG gas stove because 1) I didn't think the benefits outweighed the negatives and 2) the thought of offering a WG gas stove to the general public raised the concerns about the overall safety. These are my opinions, I am sure others will have a different point of view.

Best regards,

Jon

[Bob Gross]

"2) the thought of offering a WG gas stove to the general public raised the concerns about the overall safety."

Maybe Zelph just has a better lawyer.

–B.G.–

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

What I really wanted to work on for a UL cooking system is an unpressurized stove that ran on calcium carbide. Just carry the DRY pellets in a water proof container

[Tony Wong]

Jon,

Thanks for your thoughts and info, which I respect.

I admit that the idea of white gas was just something that occurred to me on a whim and I wanted to get feedback from the community.

I am still primarily an esbit guy, but with Dan's stoves and yours it got me thinking of alternatives.

I will play around with the white gas at home and I likely will put it into my earthquake kit where I have a few gallons of white gas.

Always appreciate the wisdom shared by the people here at BPL.

P.S. I recently assembled your Focus Fire 14 and it looks great. Just need to test it out now.

Tony

[David Thomas]

>"I think that I am on my way to developing a stove fetish now."

Tony, it is only a fetish in comparison to someone with a single stove.

Compared to Hiking Jim, you have only a mild kink about stoves.

[David Thomas]

Dan,

Thanks for the link (Venom Super Stove using HEET in the "Red" bottle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gqWJvYtcTA ).

Being me, it screamed "needs a HX on the pot", but then I react that way to all stoves.

Question: It looks like a very nice flame height when the pot is on the stove, and yet there is SO much more flame height when the pot is removed. Do you have an explanation for that discrepancy? Flame quenching by the pot? Much greater air flow without the pot? What I'm really trying to get a handle on is the completeness of combustion (for reasons of efficiency and reducing exposure to CO and HCs). So, if in a large test chamber (say, 12" diameter with a gap at the bottom, the exhaust air was measured for CO2, CO, and HCs, we could assess the completeness of combustion and the production of nasty byproducts. More CO2 is good. More CO and HC is bad. For your health and for efficiency.

[David Thomas]

>"What I really wanted to work on for a UL cooking system is an unpressurized stove that ran on calcium carbide."

Shooting from the hip, I think you're not going to have as good energy to weight as with a hydrocarbon fuel. Off to check references. . . .

Making acetylene:

CaC2 + 2 H2O → C2H2 + Ca(OH)2

You carry in 40+12+12=64 grams of carbide to make 12+12+1+1 = 26 grams of acetylene. So a pound of carbide gives you 0.41 pounds of acetylene with a gross heat of combustion of 21,500 BTU/lb for a total of 8,734 BTU per pound of carbide you schlepped in.

That's like wood.

Versus propane-butane-hexane-etc all in the range of 20,000 to 19,000 BTU/pound. So you are carrying over twice the weight of carbide as butane AND you need some way to convert carbide to acetylene in a controlled manner.

Play with it if you like, it's a great little science experiment. But no way will you be finding some lighter alternative.

Back in the day before LED bulbs; carbide had a place for weight-efficient lighting (I was a moderately serious caver for a number of years). And rather than bring a WG Coleman lantern equivalent to a 100-watt bulb (but bulky, many pounds, and fragile) for large group BP trips; I'd bring a brass carbide lantern equivalent to about a 20-25 watt incandescent bulb in a soda-can size and at about 8 ounces. Directing it at the kitchen area allowed 4-10 people to work on dinner, read a book, etc.

[Dan Yeruski]

Jon Fong said:
1) Refueling – WG typically isn't sold in small volumes so what do you do with the excess?

Yon, you grew up on my website(bplite.com) and you should have known that Zippo Lighter fluid is also known as White Gas. Zippo Lighter fluid is widely available at most every store where cigarettes are sold. It's sold in small squirt cans. Surely you knew that Yon, right? It's sold all over the world in that fashion.

Bob Gross you know very well I have not offered a stove for sale that would be dangerous. How you handle your fuel depends on the danger involved. Have you ever had a Coleman camp stove that used white gas, no need to answer that. :-)

Now if Yon Fong offers a carbide stove he had better have a ton of insurance ;-)

[Bob Gross]

"Bob Gross you know very well I have not offered a stove for sale that would be dangerous. How you handle your fuel depends on the danger involved."

Well, Dan, I didn't know that, but I would have hoped that to be correct. Due to the added dangers of white gas, that is why you have a complete set of user instructions and a legal disclaimer printed on the outside of any burner that you sell that might be used that way with white gas. You do, don't you? I thought that your lawyer was better than Jon's lawyer.

–B.G.–

[Author]

Posts