Look how far we've come in a couple hundred years. Charcoal braziers to modern tiny titanium gassies weighing a few grams and fitting in a pocket, with gas cylinder. As technology improves and battery storage capacity improves, I have no doubt that at some point we'll have battery electric stoves. Thoughts?
It would take a big jump in battery technology. I think propane and butane still have a pretty good run. Also the woodburners that generate electricity would seem to have a good future. They have to lose some weight before people will want to carry them far, and won't be practical for above timberline. ....Arch
As far as you want to carry one @Marc I'm not an avid follower of the Outdoor press so can only comment on a general impression really. I suspect the underlying drive is in how many people want to get out there and do what many of us here do and rely on good quality equipment for extended periods away from the 'masses'. Which has possibly been in decline over a number of years, particularly relying on walking/canoeing/cycling to your campsite. Not many people who say they are going 'camping' now consider a liquid fuel stove as an essential piece of kit, so this will probably still be available but in an ever decreasing market. Small gas stoves will remain popular, a very mature technology now just getting smaller and lighter, and bigger and heavier if the predominance of small briefcase styles are to be believed. Car camping. Compressed gas with some sort of catalytic converter seems to be a dead end. And as @ArchMc has suggested small wood burners for the fans could be a decent market. Investment in TEG needed by indusry there. Think we're a way off with pure electric at this point without some sort of breakthrough somewhere, either in solar capture to recharge or the chemistry of the batteries to get the requisite energy storage, which is when phasers become possible.
I am familiar with lithium ion batteries from power tools and it seems to me that they must be approaching 'peak energy density' with li ion and given how dramatic they can get when they play up I think it unlikely they will find anything better and safe enough for joe public I can imagine a stove with a battery powered generator for kerosene or gasoline - something like those vape gadgets - if you flick a switch or the stove gets knocked over the battery switches off and the flame goes out
https://newatlas.com/nickel-nuclear-battery-design/54884/ Given nickel-63's hundred-year half-life, the nuclear battery boasts about 3,300 milliWatt-hours of power per gram, which the team says is 10 times more than conventional electrochemical batteries.
Have to agree with Rickybob to a degree, not sure that battery technology is the sole limiting factor in what will go on sale in the future. The potential energy in some laptops is already enough to worry airlines (not enough for them to ban them though!).
Kelly Kettles. If all else fails, these are terrific fun and despite some idiot teacher who cocked up and injured one of their pupils they are generally safe to use. A friend showed me hers and it boiled water quicker that any liquid fueled stove I've ever seen! She's very kindly offered to buy my wife and I one and we will definitely use it. Mind you, they would be no use in areas without anything to burn in it, like on an arctic expedition, but I don't go on those!
No stove's but instead magic spoons that heat up food as your stir or as a heater element in water etc. There's been electric elements to use in mugs for years, like the modern one below but magic ones that use some new technology to agitate the molecules will be the future.
If you fire your Phaser at a pile of rocks they glow red very quickly and stay hot for plenty long to grill over camp fire style. Its the ultimate new school meets old school.
Good thoughts, all. I particularly like Dogface' nuclear battery, although I couldn't read the article as I refuse to disable my ad blocker. I agree we're a ways off from purely battery electric stoves, but to beat a thoroughly dead horse, had someone asked me about battery electric lawnmowers ten years ago, I'd have laughed. Now I have one. That same battery would boil enough water for a couple cups of tea. I've mentioned this before, but eventually I'd guess we'll have a worldwide broadcast power system, similar to wifi around one's house. You'll just pull out a tab separating some contacts on the built in antenna in your Mountain House meal and it'll tap into that power, the built in heating element will activate and a red LED will light telling you that power's flowing and heating has started. In a couple minutes a thermal switch will close and a green LED will turn on, telling you that heating is complete. Same broadcast power will supply your tent HVAC system and the car that drove you to the trailhead.
the planet earth is like a giant flywheel - if you could build a stove that taps into that energy you could heat a lot of mre's before the moon spirals in and squashes everyone
I watched the video. All 37.41 mins of it. Strip the sales blurb, smoke and mirrors and as far as I can see this guy has via maths made a very efficient coil. yet I do NOT see how (and did not see any real examples) it can be used to give us free energy/feed everyone and solve all our problems. TBH it reminded me of the presentation (but far slicker) of cold fusion. That turned out to be wrong. The only demo that might show something was charging a battery whilst lighting some led lights. but there was no showing what power the solar cell was actually producing. So no way of seeing if the battery being charged at the same time as the leds lit was really just down to a big enough output from the solar cell. It may have potential but from this presentation I would be far from convinced! Energy storage has always been the sticking point. Electric cars/lights etc. etc. It takes x amount of energy to boil (from say 20C) a litre of water. That is straight physics. Even if the stove could transfer 100 % of the energy into the water, you still need x amount of energy! What you are talking about is just how well (and compactly) you can store that amount of energy for cooking for example. To go camping for say a week (say two hot meals a day) you would need a way to store x x's 2 x's 7 (not fully correct because you prob wouldn't boil 1 litre each time but you get the point). At the moment we use gas/kero/wood etc. When we can harness atomic power and store it safely then we might have something. Until then I do not see in my lifetime things changing much. I hope I am wrong but battery technology has a very long way to go to be the replacement for fossil fuels. Yes it is coming with cars and lorries. I do not see an electric car that I can use that will pull my caravan at least 100 miles and be rechargeable in a short space of time happening any time soon. I think we will see more efficient stoves perhaps. Using alcohol stoves taught me that with kero/gas/white gas stoves we tend to blast loads of heat at the pot in an inefficient way. With alcohol, you just don't have that spare energy to start with. So you have to do it in a more efficient way.
I still say the Kelly Kettle is the only answer. If we ever run out of things to burn, like small twigs, dead wood, moss, dried bracken, dried heather or anything like that we'll all be dead anyway! So long as plants grow, wither and die, there will be fuel. There's no way I'm entrusting my future camp cooking to the damned electric company... just not going to happen, they'll fix the costs so they make money while making me miserable and poor.
Easier to have Mr Scott beam down some replicator rations. And if you see guys in rubber lizard suits, you made need all your phaser energy packs.
