This stove arrived with another Amazon order, I'd added it to my cart so I'd look at it in greater detail later, and forgot to remove it when I placed another order. Woops. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B071P1X3ML/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 As arrived. Mesh bag is almost spongy, padded? Much more thickness to it than just a mesh. In my mind, the mesh defeats most of the purpose of the bag, keeping the mess contained. Removed from bag, nested together. Very obvious that various things were sized specifically for nesting. Base w/ air holes. Gassifier section in hand, viewed from the bottom. Gas passage visible at the near/bottom end, gas ports visible at the far/top end. Gassifier section in place on top of the base, gas ports clearly visible at the top. Burner basin visible to the left. Burner basin in place. There's a rolled lip on the top of the burner basin and a matching rolled lip on the bottom of the gassifier section to that the burner basin is held off the ground by half an inch/12mm or so. Pot support in place. I looked at this model specifically as it has a gap in the support and can be refueled mid-burn. To be continued.....
Next to a 502 for size comparison. Wish I had thought to get a weight. It was 34F/1C outside, sleeting, with a stiff breeze, I'm fighting off a cold, and some small portion of lazy as well. I didn't run around outside trying to find dry sticks(hah, dry!), I grabbed a couple handfuls of pellets out of the pellet stove hopper in the other bay of the shop. Utilizing field expedient fuels is what this stove is about, right? Right. Exhaust fan turned on, blaze started using leaves that had blown into the shop and a paper towel. Burned well enough to demonstrate the gassifier function, but failed miserably in lighting the pellets. I resorted to a propane torch. Just getting started here. Fire lit just before 5:30pm. Well on stride, here. You can see the gassifier ports doing their business, and the gas igniting. No smoke. Exhaust smelled like..............exhaust. I smelled hot stainless steel and manufacturing oils cooking off, but no hint of wood burning. Played with some camera settings and got a much better photo of the gassifier ports doing their thing.
Tea test? Glad you asked. Kettle on, the stove started most definitely smelling now. Not of wood smoke, but definitely of incompletely burned fuel. I suspect raising the pot support another several inches would be fruitful. View through the bottom as the fuel starts to be consumed. Looks like I was wrong in my measurement above, burner basin is held around 1"/2.5cm above the surface it rests on. Tea test handily passed. While the condensation line above shows a full kettle, I dumped about half of that water out as I wasn't making that much tea. About 7 minutes to a boil. Glad I used the shop kettle: View from underneath as the fuel is consumed across the fuel bed. Pellets that had fallen through the grate being ignited by radiant heat from above. Do note that this stove can NOT be used safely on flammable or non-heat proof surfaces. If you wouldn't build a fire on it, don't use this stove on it. Gassification failing on one side as the fuel is consumed, reduced to glowing coals. 6pm ish, I am concluding the test. Two double handfuls of pellets, half hour burn time, quite respectable. Still VERY warm and may even still bring a kettle to a boil at this point, but fire was very much down, gassification completely stopped, just charcoal burning at this point. A very well constructed stove. China has well and truly turned a corner, I'm constantly amazed at the quality of goods coming out of that country for very little money. I'd extend the pot support another 6"/15cm for more efficient burn and hopefully less mess on the pot, but otherwise this is fantastic as-is. I'll try it with actual sticks or pinecones when there's some available that's dry, and also try the refueling capability, and report back. Curious to see how adding newly gassifying material on top of burning material works out. Thoughts, comments, questions, anyone want photos of specific items or areas, chime in.
Was really impressed with the Lixada version on pellets as well, hope to use it again later today. Hope to get some better images than those here. https://classiccampstoves.com/threads/root-veg-biryani.37055/
Good morning. What other gasifier stoves do you have, to compare this one to? For pellets try some hardware cloth to prevent them from falling through. Those holes look big. For lighting, after you put fire starter on top of your wood, lay thin twigs across the top. They will burn and fall in, which will help the initial burn. Fire starter, cotton balls with Vaseline works great. Ken in NC
Very good point. I've made a couple gassifier stoves out of paint cans and such. Purely from memory, I remember them doing just about as well as this one. Whether that says something about this stove, my paint can contraptions, or my memory is up for debate. This Chinese stove is definitely more durable and packable, being made of thicker stainless steel and the sections being designed to nest together for storage.
I love using these gasifier stoves... As Ken advised a disc of mesh at the bottom is a much needed mod' for burning pellets... I buy the big cat litter pellets. The mesh came from an old flour sieve I bought from a charity shop.
hi Marc Your stove is called a TLUD (top light up draft) the only way to cut the final burning smell is to put a forced draft (computer fan) regards
There was a lot of study that went into the calculation of the ratio of lower outside hole size and number to the upper inside hole size and number. An Internet search can show some very busy people that worked on making gasifier stoves to combat early health issues in third world countries. They developed some really good information. Could be that this clone strayed from the original. Maybe try a ring around the outside to partially close off the holes and control the burn.
Thanks folks. Will try a couple more burns with it but as for mods, this one is staying stock for the time being. Have other fish to fry at the moment. It was fine, burned with no smell until I put the kettle on. I wouldn't light a campfire in my shop otherwise, exhaust fan or not.
I also made of few of these back in the day. They were fun and worked fairly well, but been made of various tin cans, they quickly rusted out. I've been tempted to purchase a stainless steel version. Also noticed the issue with maintaining a good draft when a pot is placed on top, and agree raising the supports is probably the easiest fix. I do have an issue with one of the theories on how these work. It is often implied, although not always explicitly stated, that the wood gases are somehow drawn from the bottom, and then up between the sidewalls before being "injected" into the flame at the top via the upper ports. I think the "down-draft" adjective contributed to this. I am pretty sure, after further reading, that the appearance of jets at the top is generated by the introduction of fresh secondary air, drawn up the side, into the much richer wood gas/air mix in the main chamber. This results in less smoke but also recovers some the heat that would be lost to the sides of the burning chamber. Not a big deal, just my anal need to understand what is really going on.
@Marc The Lixada, noting the significant difference in height from stove top to bottom of pot. Here using a 10" DO. I've also noticed the soot deposits from the pellets is quite bad, and the second shot is after recently added pellets, probably reducing efficiency. Lighting I used BBQ lighting gel, and I also like the Mod to fit the sieve to reduce hole size. They are good fun and efficient, and even though this was only my second trial run with it would happily carry along. It also came with a small dish, possibly for hexamine use, and could easily.be used with a Trangia burner I guess, but that's for another day. In which case could be considered a multi fuel burner.
I made a few. My pot stand was another can/cylinder with cut-outs for the flame and to add wood. If a cylinder, without cut-outs, replaces the pot stand cylinder there can be a greater draw. That is cool to watch. Info here if you wish. http://aprovecho.org/ I had thought the gas from the wood went down, but this illustration shows otherwise. https://theultimatehang.com/instructions-wood-gas-stove/
Thanks for that @snwcmpr, some food for thought. I was using it in fairly benign conditions and slight breeze would certainly move the flame about. My feeling g is that the style @Marc has would need some wind shielding. I'll have to check dimensions, but from your leaflet and the fact the existing upper potstand is removable, it could easily be replaced by something similar to the images. Giant silent burner outer cap? Trouble is you're working with already combusting fuel which just needs managing.
Did not the UK have a lot of gasifier powered vehicles in the war time era? I have seen one truck here locally powered by wood gas. You Tube Engineer775 built it. LINK to his channel
Thank you Ken, I had thought the ports were for gas as well. Air makes more sense. I wonder if a central hollow air passage through the fuel, that ends at the point of the air ports, would help. Similar to a center draft lamp. I can cut a piece of pipe to length and put it in place very easily, I think that'll be worth the two minutes the experiment will take.
Pan support removed for photo, piece of 3/4" square tubing in the center as center air draft/draught: View to air hole in the bottom: Houston, we have ignition: Couple shots of flame grouped around the central air passage: No smell when burning, still smelled/smoked when kettle was added. Didn't use a stopwatch, but no discernible difference in boil time.
Second attempt, larger center draft tube. This time ~2.5" diameter. Tubing sizes were selected after a very complicated and involved calculation process, taking into account existing airflow, projected airflow requirements, area of increased air passage volume needed to achieve those increased air flow requirements, prevailing winds, humidity, temperature, phase of the moon, how much tea water I wanted to brew, and lastly, what I had available in my scrap pile. Comparison to previous air passage tube, in hand: Ignition. This time a torch was used for ease/speed: After burn has stabilized. Kettle being held in my other hand, visible top left. No smell, hot enough that I couldn't hold my hand at kettle height for any time at all. This time it did take slightly longer to boil the kettle, but there was no smoke or smell when the kettle was put in place. Completely acceptable to me, increased efficiency being valued over raw power. The gasifier seemed to burn the same length of time as previously, but with the center hollow no longer filled with pellets, it was obviously burning less pellets. As it burned down, the flames licked higher. Centering the central air passage tube absolutely as closely as possible appears to be pretty important for a stable burn throughout the entire fuel load.
Forced air induction really helps improve the efficiency of the burn. Consistency of the fuel is important (type, size, moisture content), as it is in any wood burning appliance, if greater consistency and efficiency is to be achieved. The correct height above the flame is important. Most of these Chinese stoves situate the pot too low. They are coming out with pot supports that are higher now than those on the earlier iterations. These little stoves are fun, but simply supplying air to create fire jets from the gasses driven off does not equal efficiency. They are filthy, creating horrendous messes of tars on cooking pots over time.
Oh yeah, take a look at the kettle pic I posted after the first burn. Didn't take any time at all for nastiness to build up. Less fuel + same burn time + still boiling kettle in nearly the same amount of time = more efficiency. Also, with the larger air tube, the reduced airflow from putting a kettle on top didn't cause a rich/stinky burn, like it did with the smaller air tube or no air tube.
