I use alcohol only in my Optimus 111, for various arcane reasons I won't bore you with now. I got a blurb from Amazon hawking all manner of "Bio-Ethanol" and "Ventless" alcohol fuels, apparently for use in alcohol-burning fireplaces.......(fireplaces?!) Having never seen or heard of such contraptions, I'll just assume they work and people are happy with such things. And that these fuels work for that purpose. Many different brands: FP-1, Moda, Regal, Ignis, Smartfuel. Has anybody used this stuff in the field in their stoves? Can they truly be used in a closed environment?
I'd check the MSDS for the various brands. They should be mostly denatured alcohol (that is, pretty much anything mixed with ethanol) but in order to generate yellow flames they may have high amounts of iso-propanol or something else. The something else may be listed as "% other" with a "lesser-than-or-equal" sign.
Never having seen an "alcohol-fuel fireplace" in action, the yellow flames factor never entered my head. Excellent point. "We don' need no steenking yellow flames......" Not in my stove.
I don't think the yellow flame is from the fuel but from the actual "fireplace." There have been discussions on the bio-ethanol fuels a few times here in the not too distant past. I recall John @presscall discussing them and also Ben @z1ulike Maybe they'll chime in or a site search will bring up those past discussions. I haven't been able to find these fuels around here and I don't want to pay amazon prices so I use the regular denatured 50/50 ethanol/methanol alcohol. If I need a higher ethanol fuel, in a pressure stove for instance, I use the Kleenstrip Green at 90% ethanol.
There's also the safety issue, alcohol burns with a near colorless flame, in daylight, you can't see the alcohol burning. Certain salts are added to give the flame a orange hue, isopropanol may be used for that as well. Murph
Here is one such ventless "fire-place" fuel. It appears to be just 70% iso-pr. The bio-fuels are likely to be mostly ethanol, but I think anything can be called bio-stuff.
The MSDS is the critical thing when buying “alcohol” for stoves. It doesn’t matter to the stove where the ethanol comes from (bio- or otherwise). I use what’s sold in Australia under the name of “Methylated Spirits” - it’s adulterated ethanol; adulterated to make it impossible to drink. It over 95% ethanol. Sometimes I use leftover pure laboratory ethanol but it’s expensive and absolutely no worth it to buy. Tony
