Liquid Fuel Consumption vs. Canister Fuel Consumption.

MSR stoves are not known for being miserly with fuel.

Light it outside on an un flammable surface. Follow the directions.

I find a quart gas bottle lasts 12 days with hot drinks and hot foods twice a day for 1 person.

8 oz of white gas should do about the same as 8 oz of canister fuel. Check it out first though.

Read the instructions : )

Pump fuel bottle to pressurize. Open valve to let a little fuel into cup. Light it, wait for it to heat up a bit and then turn on valve. If you wait too long, flame will go out so you have to re-light it. If you turn on valve too soon, more liquid fuel will go into cup and create larger flame. Too much liquid and cup will over-fill and create much larger flame. When it's hot enough, there'll be a blue flame. This is "priming the stove".

If the stove is hot, but it goes out, then you turn the valve back on and re-light. this is the "interesting" time because there will be a cloud of vapor and a quick, large fire ball. Make sure and keep your head back or your eyebrows will be singed. After the first time or two, you'll remember this and avoid doing this again.

White gas is dirty fuel and tends to clog up over time. Make sure you know how to take apart the burner in the field. I think your stove has a orifice cleaning pin built in. You just turn upside down and shake and the pin will go into orifice and clean it. This usually works.

I just did this inside……

Good thing I had a swanstone cutting board underneath it….and good thing the door to the outside is by the kitchen………….

Almost burnt down the kitchen

Pretty simple. The liquid burns, but there's no pressure, so it needs to vaporize. Same concept as a canister stove, or alcohol stove for that matter.

You don't have streams of liquid flowing from your canister burner nozzles, for example, it's the vaporized gas that comes out that is fueling the burner when operating properly. A canister is, after all, filled with liquid when under pressure.

In a liquid stove, in order for the liquid fuel to vaporize, it needs to be heated up to the point of boiling off and turning to vapor. This happens in the "generator", typically a short piece of piping that runs directly over the burner. When the burner is going, the fuel flows through the generator and gets vaporized by the heat of the burner itself, and the gas given off is what burns, not the liquid.

In order to start this process though, liquid stoves need to be "primed". An MSR has a little pan under the burner, a small cup, some have a wick in there too. You start by pressurizing the tank, then crack the valve open just enough for a little liquid to flow into the "primer pan", then shut the valve off. Light the primer pan with this small amount of controlled fuel in it, and when it gets the generator up to temp, slowly crack the valve open again. Typically there will be some sputtering at first, as a little liquid seeps in, and eventually it will take off. Then the process is self sustaining.

If it's not hot enough when you crack open the valve again, the fuel won't vaporize and will just spill out, and over, the cup, possibly creating quite an impressive ball of flame. We've all done it once, at least.

It's kind of an art, as well as a science, so practice a little… in a safe environment obviously ;)

Straight chain n-Hexane has a heat of combustion of 19,403 BTU/pound. Xylene, to choose a aromatic hydrocarbon, is 17,760.

Using mostly straight-chain, C5 to C9 compounds as a proxy for white gas, I'd estimate white gas at 19,300.

Versus n-butane at 19,680, isobutane at 19,629, and propane at 19,944 BTU/pound.

So the compressed gases in a canister have about 2-3% more heat content per fuel weight than white gas. But really, they're pretty close.

White gas stoves need to be primed and that uses more than 2-3% so that's a bigger factor against white gas.

Everything else being equal, I'd bring 10 ounces of white gas will do as much cooking for you as 8 ounces of a butane/propane mix canister.

But, for any stove, how well matched the pot is to the burner size, wind screen, etc is a bigger variable.

And an even bigger variable is if your pot has a heat-exchanger on it's base.

From several years of field experience, I can say that I found that I needed at least 50% more weight of white gas than butane/propane, and about 100% more for kerosene.

White gas does not burn as well: you get more partial combustion. You use a fair bit of fuel priming the stove several times a day; if you leave the stove running between uses to avoid the hassles of priming then that also uses more fuel. Kero – is worse.

Never mind the theoretical chemistry: that's about 5 years of hard-core field data.

Cheers

I thought about including cautions about short-use inefficiencies, but just hit "Post" instead.

Roger's right – if you have to repeated reprime a white gas stove, you'll go through more fuel and singe more eyebrows than one long, continuous use. And, he's also right that most people will do a lot to avoid constantly repriming their white gas stove and so they turn it down instead of off. So many best-practices stove uses are much easier with canister stoves. For instance: Bring the water close to a boil and turn off while your noodles, rice or gruel "cooks". Once it's soft, reheat it quickly to the desired temperature. Also, heat JUST enough water for the task. If you misjudge, another 50 ml of hot water is easy to heat up. And, since we all bring only one pot (we are BPL), you're heating water once for each course and hot drink.

Canisters shine when used in short bursts. So summer use and small parties really benefit from canisters. If you're heating a lot of water (e.g. 100 gallons for a hot tub) or melting snow for a large party, then the fact that white gas sells (by the gallon) for 1/4 the cost of canister fuel starts to make a difference.

But, again, before fretting much about fuel efficiency, get a HX pot inside of a well-fitting windscreen.

Roger, I see more soot on the bottom of a pot over white gas (and much more over kerosene) than over butane/propane. While that's obviously bad for fuel efficiency, CO output worries me more. Your thoughts?

> Roger, I see more soot on the bottom of a pot over white gas (and much more over
> kerosene) than over butane/propane. While that’s obviously bad for fuel efficiency,
> CO output worries me more. Your thoughts?
Part 6 of my CO series covers that very thoroughly. But in brief, the results do depend a lot on which stove you are using, but all liquid fuel stoves are oxygen-starved.

White gas stoves could be anywhere from 25 ppm to 317 ppm at Low, while at High they went from 15 ppm to 200 ppm. Some of the better stoves like the Whisperlite Int’l actually dropped in CO production at High power.

With kero the figures are worse, and I regret to say I did not test all of them with kero. Some would not run on kero anyhow. The Whisperlite ran 270(Low) to 200 (High), while the XGK ran at 90 ppm on High.

The production of soot certainly does mean incomplete combustion, and that will certainly be accompanied by lots of CO being emitted. But I am sure you knew that already. :-)

When I was using kero I always had the stove very near the door of the tent – which made for some drafty dinners in the snow. And Sue at the back end of the tent used to get the sniffles from the kero fumes too. After switching to canister, we are very happy campers even in seriously bad snow storms – and our pots are clean.

Cheers

Fuel use with WG depends on the stove and burner you are using. Perhaps more so than alcohol. Alcohol (methanol and ethanol) are easy to burn since they are generally partialy combusted anyway. Typically they have lower heat values that either WG blends or butane blends.

The simple weight of the fuels mean that alcohol is better suited to short 2-3 night trips out.

With canister gas and Roger's stove, I get about 9-12gm/liter. Though this does not have the extensive use of WG stoves, this is good for about a week to two weeks for me.

With the old SVEA I get about the same fuel use, 9-12gm/liter. This usually covers the priming, but with the midi pump, this is minimal. Theoretically it would be about 1gm or so.

This is soo close to theoretical numbers that I ignore the BTU difference between fuels. Wind, air temp, water temp, and heat screen differences would lead me to say these are within 2-3% of fuel usage, I don't see the 10% I would interpret as significant.

With the Whisperlite (an older non-universal or international model) I got about 20gm/liter on a good day. Average was closer to 23gm/L. I believe this was because I could never get it to run consistently on low. It would flutter and require turning up, then get to hot and require turning down.

With the Simmerlite, I got about 25gm/L. (I believe this was mostly priming ineficiency. It took a long time to prime and would not run on low.)

Both the Simmerlite and Whisperlite jive very well with Roger's numbers and, I would guess, CO production and David's soot.

"….Almost burnt down the kitchen"

Imagine that in a silnylon shelter. Crispy hiker! I've had a liquid fuel stove develop a leak while running (I was testing a used/unknown stove). It was …. entertaining.

I grew up on liquid fuel stoves, notably Coleman, but there were Svea/Optimus models about too. Gaz came into the picture and the ease, convienience and cost were appreciated. MSR stoves were for serious stuff and expensive for working class hikers. Campfires were free!

So these tiny hot canister stoves we have now are a joy. Most of my camping trips are overnight or 3-days, so fuel consumption and cost are of little concern. When it's time for dinner I'm tired and I want to eat and fiddling with a cranky stove is not recreational. Likewise in the morning— I would frighten a Sasquatch before my caffeine arrives and watching me bringing a liquid fuel stove to life at 5am on a rainy morning is not a pretty thing.

Turn knob, press igniter, boil water. Me like.

With all these hassles of this liquid fuel I think I might just stick to canisters…..

Plus its kind of messy, do i take the pump out every time and re-cap the bottle? such a hassle!

Should I just ditch the whisper lite universal. I can just return it to REI i guess. Its heavy at 14 oz when I can get a pocket rocket for half the price and half the weight. (i had a pocket rocket at one point)

We originally got the whisper lite universal for "survival" type situations b/c it can burn almost any fuel.

I guess my question is what is the availability of canister fuel overseas in Asia. Specifically Korea. We are moving there in a few months.

If you can get canister fuel, ditch the WG stove, definitely!!!!

All my canisters say "made in Korea" so it must be available there. Japan would have it also.

Another case WG might be better if it's really cold. Down to 25 F canister is fine as long as it has iso-butane. N-butane is good down to maybe 40 F. Most canistyers have iso-butane.

Inverted canister stove or putting the canister in a pan of water lets you use canister maybe down to 10 F. Below that maybe WG is better.

Somebody had a lid that fits canister bottom, turn canister upside down and fill bottom with water, put on lid to keep water in place, turn rightside up and use it.

Roger sells an inverted canister stove that's pretty good.

Well this stove can take WG, canister, even gasoline.

Stuff that is made in korea maybe not actually be found in korea. trade rules and stuff. surprisingly enough most of the rice consumed by Korea is grown in california. They don't have that much "livable" land.

"Stuff that is made in korea maybe not actually be found in korea"

That, I believe : )

Maybe if you researched it a bit you could find places that sell it there.

Nathan,

Leave the pump in the fuel bottle, not need to remove it. I would keep the stove myself. Liquid fuels still are the best in cold weather and a lot more economical to run than canister stoves. If you want the convenience of a canister stove pick one up, they are very inexpensive. The Pocket Rocket is only $40. I find it worth it to have both types of stoves.

We have gotten spoiled these days. Used to be you had to clear a safe area, gather wood, try to get the damp wood burning and deal with the smoke, soot and crap of building a fire before you could eat dinner. :)

Maybe it is years of liquid fuel stove use, but I don't find the priming and lighting of the stoves that big a deal. Yes, canister stoves are easier and a bit more convenient, but not all that much. The downside is the cost of fuel as you are essentially re buying a portion of the stove (fuel tank) each time you purchase fuel.

Since living space in Korea is a lot smaller than here in the US a lot of korean apartments do not have stoves. They use these:

http://www.amazon.com/Camp-Chef-Mountain-Series-Butane/dp/B00A0M3B5E/ref=pd_sim_hpc_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=0WR3WHPY15DY4B38VZHZ

Or something similar. Has anyone used something like this. AND do the threads line up I could screw on my canister stove or my whisperlite onto it.

If it does then canister fuel is abundant in Korea and probably most Asian countries

Something to think about and try out.

If those canisters don't work on regular canister stove like Pocket Rocket, I bet they'll work on Roger's stove which is more flexible on types of canisters.

If they're N-butane, which is likely, they won't work below about 40 F without putting in pan of water or whatever. But if those are the conditions you're going to use it in then it would work.

Those canisters use a totally different fitting and will not fit directly on canister stoves. There may be some adapter available that would allow use with a backpacking canister stove.

>"There may be some adapter available that would allow use with a backpacking canister stove."

There are adaptors available. Try them out first. The one I got (it was anodized gold) was poorly made and it attached to the table-top-stove butane cartridge but I couldn't get it off.

Those table-top-stove butane cartridges are pure butane, so they won't work well anywhere near freezing unless you have a lot of reflected heat or set them in warm water. Although a tea candle under the cartridge does wonders, there is a lot list of safety issues accompanying that trick!

If the island is small enough, you fly in on a DeHavilland Beaver and can bring whatever fuel you want. But one gets to Kauai or Adak on a jet and then TSA gets involved.

Those flat tabletop stoves use butane canisters with a different connection – like a paint can. They lock in place with a clip or something at the base – no threads at all. If you look down the Amazon page referenced you will see packs of butane canisters suitable for the stove. The format of the stove is actually quite convenient at home.

No, my stove does not connect to these canisters. Straight butane is not suitable for winter use, and my stove is a winter stove.

Yes, a lot of canisters are made in Korea, as that is the home of one of the world's leading filling factories.

Cheers