Adding to old thread for completion sake. I have been using the bio ethanol fuel in the sailboat Origo stove. It definitely has a much stronger odor when burning compared to the 50/50 blend. Since I bought a case of the stuff, I will use it up on the boat. Should take years.
Thanks What product has the blend you refer to? Odor, from .... The biological product used to make the alcohol? The bitterant used to 'denature' it?
Hey, Brad, @BradB , RE: sooty pots, back when I got my first Trangia stove set, I bought some alcohol, someplace, and tried it in my new acquisition. It burned horribly!! The soot was thick, and not only on the bottom, but all the way up the sides of my Trangia pots, too!! At that moment, I decided that all the bad things I'd read about using alcohol stoves must be true, and I didn't use that stove for many years thereafter. Once I found CCS, I found that there are many types of alcohol, and some formulations are nasty in stoves, and some not at all. I took another look at my nice Trangia set, and found that they did not soot up the pots, even in the least!! I had already bought my first Optimus 81 Trapper stove by that time, and I did find that that stove, with the same alcohol, did leave a hard, brown deposit on the bottoms of it's pot set. However, it did not wipe off, nor transfer color to anything else. AND, as a benefit, I began to see vast improvements in the 81's boiling times, due to the darkened pot bottoms. Since the color did not come off, but grew deeper with each use, and since my boiling times were getting much better than they had been when using the 81's brand new shiny pots, I was quite happy to leave the brown deposits as they were!!! I still have that first 81 Trapper, as well as several others, now, and the brown deposits are still in place of the two I've fired up, and they both work better because of it!! Note: there is a huge difference between this hard, brown deposit, and the smoky, sooty mess that the crappy alcohol put onto my first Trangia 25 stove!!! Soot - NO, hard brown deposits - YES, by all means, leave it as it is, and enjoy the benefits therefrom!! Just my 'tuppence, and you may, of course, clean your pots 'til your heart's content, if you, and or the wife, wish to. Have fun, whichever way you choose to go, and God Bless! Every Good Wish, Doc
Make no Mistake This is false and dangerous information. Ethanol is Grain based alcohol and drinkable up to a certain percentage. Make no mistake it is still classified as a toxin and can kill. However Methanol (Mentholated Spirits) is a total different type of toxin. It is made from Wood and will kill you. As little as one consumed tablespoon is very likely to blind you. Ethanol and Methanol are definitely not the same and the messages that say that it is are false and shameful and should be removed from this forum. Be aware that burning methanol is fine for camping, heating food and water but not for roasting food over an open flame as the fumes are also toxic. I recommend Ethanol or Bio Ethanol. Commercial Ethanol (Drinking Alcohol) Includes man made toxins to induce vomiting if your body intakes more than it can handle. Make a note that Moonshine will not likely have these ingredients and over drinking will definitely kill. Alcohol in general works as an anesthetic and an overdose will be deadly.
Sorry but as a post meant to dispel myths regarding different types of alcohol, it is riddled with inaccuracies.
We are talking about fuel for stoves, and generally that is not made for drinking. Most of stove fuel has additives that make the fuel dangerous to drink. Often added to avoid that people try to drink it.
@carllarsen Welcome. What you have referred to as “Mentholated” spirits is obviously a typo, and I assume you meant Methylated Spirits. Methylated Spirits is denatured alcohol, specifically denatured ethanol. In the past ethanol was denatured to stop it being drunk, and it was denatured with methanol. These days in many countries (Australia for example), for safety reasons, Methylated Spirits is denatured with a bitterant (not methanol) to make it undrinkable. Methanol Methanol has the chemical formula of CH3OH. It is commonly called wood alcohol but does not need to be made from wood, and these days it is made through other industrial processes. Methanol is far more toxic to humans than alcohol. One of the effects of methanol poisoning short of death is blindness. As little as 10ml of ingested methanol can cause blindness in humans by destroying the optic nerve. Ethanol The chemical formula for ethanol is CH3CH2OH. It is the “alcohol” in correctly distilled or brewed whiskey, vodka, wine, beer etc. At concentrations of around 0.4% in the bloodstream of humans, ethanol can lead toxic unconsciousness; at higher concentrations, death. Tony
2 parts to that though. First not all countries produce methanol free methylated spirits and with international trade as it is would you trust the powers that be to stop all imports of methanol tainted meths? They cant test every drop. second the industrial processes used to produce methylated spirits are not regulated in the same way drinking alcohol is. For the intended use a little amount of methanol might not be considered a contaminant. I know the people down the square drinking purple wine would disagree and for the most part it doesnt seem to hurt them unduly even home distillers produce some methanol. Its hard for a diy test to pick the point in the batch where it changes first from methanol to ethanol and second to isopropyl so rule of thump is only collect the middle third of the batch but does your mate down the road always get this right?
Denatonium benzoate is used to denature ethanol. It is the most bitter chemical compound known. Dilutions of as little as 10 ppm are unbearably bitter to most humans. Ben
During the pandemic, especially the early part with the shortage of hand sanitizers (which proved eventually to be irrelevant anyway), there were a lot of craft distilleries in the US that began to produce the stuff to fill the huge demand, and as a public service, as some said. But the required bitterant is so powerful that it destroyed a lot of expensive equipment; multiple cleansings were of no avail. Many serious losses ensued. Of course, within a few months the warehouses were awash in hand sanitizer....and there was no corresponding demand for the stuff anymore.
The UK too, since EU guidance in 2013. UK meths and bioethanol are now identical apart from the dye, although 'meths' no longer requires a purple dye but this continues as the public are easily confused. ....But this doesn't stop almost weekly appearances online of new videos by 'content creators'- 'Which burns hotter in a Trangia- Bioethanol or Meths?' Bless 'em.
Interesting enough you can buy Denatonium Bensoate on Amazon. $24 buys you enough to treat 2,640 gallons of alcohol. Pretty economical I'd say. Ben
The alcohol I use for priming is Klean Strip denatured alcohol, sold as fuel (the label prominently says fuel). The SDS says that it is 30-90% ethanol, 5-60% methanol, and 0.1-1% methyl isobutyl ketone, the last likely being the bitterant. I don't have an alcohol stove, so I don't use very much of it.
