Olive Oil as a fuel

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

On another thread is a prototype stove designed to burn wax. A friend of mine wanted me to try to burn olive oil and it seemed like it might work fine.  Olive Oil needed a little more oxygen to burn, but I was able to generate a rich blue flame.

Olive Oil was difficult to ignite and it was pretty smoky until the housing was set in place.  I didn’t do any boil test as I only wanted to see the flame shape and color.

the more you burn, the more you learn

 

[Art …]

so now you’re telling me olive oil is cheaper and more efficient than white gas ?

most efforts at reinventing the wheel are simply spinning the wheel until it falls off.

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

Well Olive Oil is certainly a multi-use fuel and it is much safer to swallow than other fuels ;-).  This was just an experiment to show that you CAN burn oil.  The more we understand how to burn these longer hydrocarbon chains, the more that they might find an application somewhere.  BTW, you can also burn white gas passively with a gassifier as well:  it is slow and it stinks but it is reasonably efficient (boil 2 cups using 10 ml or so).

[Author]

Posts