I recently bought my first multi-fuel stove. The information I found on this forum was very helpful for me to decide that the Optimus Polaris was the right stove for me. (Sorry Svea 123, your time has not come… yet…). I’ve used it a few times, more to try out than anything, and have a few questions. By the way, I am switching to priming with methanol when possible to avoid the soot of starting with petroleum fuel. Denatured ethanol is not easily available in Canada but methanol is. Is the “helicoptering” sound anything to worry about? Assume that I want to avoid soot but am not yet a combustion perfectionist. From this thread and others, it seems to be something that is okay to ignore. It did seem like the stove smelled a bit when it helicoptered, and burned without odour when I kept the flame low enough to avoid helicoptering. Based on what I read here, I purchased charcoal lighter fluid as fuel, because the containers of Coleman Fuel and MSR that I saw were both larger and more expensive per unit of volume. It happened to be Royal Oak brand and I thought it smelled like naphtha. I found it sooty to prime but clean to burn thereafter, and it seems to evaporate completely. I think I have read some posts equating it with kerosene/paraffin, but I think those may have been from European authors. In Canadian markets, is charcoal lighter fluid closest to white gas, kerosene, or something else? I have some citronella lamp oil that is over 20 years old. The citronella seems to have all evaporated, along with some of the fuel. What is left may be a heavier fraction than what was originally in the container. It burned fine in my stove, except that the remnants (in the fuel line?) seem to be irritatingly stinky. (I live in an apartment, so stove and fuel are stored in my living space.) It left no notable soot on my pot (at least in the few minutes it took to boil water). Should I expect problems over the longer term if I burn older Canadian lamp oil in my Polaris, if so what? It is really easy with this stove to use the magnetic tool to jiggle the jet needle. I have half a container of mineral spirits. The safety data sheet from the manufacturer (Reocochem) seems generic to “Kerosene, Lamp Oil, Mineral Spirits, Paint Thinner, Solvent, Varsol, Citronella, Charcoal Lighter Fluid” and describes it as 100% Stoddard solvent; and per Wikipedia that means it is “typically over 65% C10 or higher hydrocarbons”. It seems a little stinkier and greasier than charcoal lighter fluid. I have not tried burning it yet. Are mineral spirits a suitable combustible for my multi-fuel stove? In the Canadian context are mineral spirits equivalent to white gas, kerosene, something else, or none of the above? I’ve seen a post mention that mineral spirits means different things in different countries. Comment - decent fuels are cheap, but I would rather burn up the mineral spirits and old lamp oil, if they are suitable as fuels, than keep more and more containers of fuel around my home.
1. I don't have that stove so I can't really answer the first question. I suspect it is fine. 2. Charcoal lighter fluid is closest to kerosene. I test burned it in my Whisperlite 600 using the kerosene jet a while back and it burned quite well. If you prime with alcohol, you avoid the soot. Although with your stove you probably shouldn't really see any soot on the exterior surfaces. The SDS sheet shows it has properties that are similar to kerosene, if not a little lighter than kerosene. 3. I'm not sure about this one. There may be remnants of the citronella left that might lead to deposits. Also, if what is left is the heavier fractions, it may be heavier than kerosene now. That would lead to more deposits over time. 4. Mineral spirits should be closest to kerosene. I don't know what is available to you, but here in the States there are a lot of different varieties of mineral spirits. The best candidate for me is the Klean Strip odorless mineral spirits. Some months ago I was looking at the SDS sheets for a bunch of them and they all seemed pretty similar to kerosene in properties - flash point, density, boiling point. The odorless one seemed the best choice in terms of, well, being odorless. I have thought about getting some to try it, but I have not done so yet since it costs more than the kerosene I can get here. My local Walmart currently has a closeout price on Crown kerosene. $5 a gallon. Needless to say, I have stocked up, not because I use it in stoves, but rather because I use it for supplemental heat when it gets cold here. My heat is with a heat pump and it really struggles when it gets down below 30° F not to mention 20° or even 10°. Your winters are quite a bit colder than mine, but you have gas heat. It makes a world of difference. $5 a gallon is less than I pay at the pump, and this Crown kerosene is cleaner and has quite noticeably less odor than what I get from the pump at the gas station. I don't smell it when I burn it, but I do smell it if I spill it or get it on my fingers. Burning cheap no name charcoal lighter fluid. Burning kerosene. It looks like a bigger flame, but in person it was pretty similar to charcoal lighter fluid. The picture was taken closer to the stove.
Chumango, thank you for answering all my questions, in a lot of detail. My mineral spirits (an old container; Recochem brand) does not evaporate fully, and leaves a bit of greasy residue, which I do expect of kerosene. My charcoal lighter fluid (Royal Oak, which I think is American?) evaporates fully. I did not expect that of kerosene. Both of the above are colourless. I might have a confused expectation of what kerosene is, though. I thought kerosene was the same as home heating fuel oil, which I thought was interchangeable with diesel, which in turn I thought was oily and the colour of maple syrup. However. seems it can be clear. Is kerosene always oily, or does it sometimes evaporate fully without a residue? I don’t think we have Crown brand kerosene here, but if we did, I would expect to pay about CAD19 or USD14 per gallon. Coleman fuel seems to be about twice as expensive as kerosene, and MSR Powerfuel seems to be about twice as expensive again. Based on what you say about my old citronella-ish lamp oil, I will not prioritize that for my Polaris. Those are nice flames in your post! (By the way, how we heat our homes in Canada varies greatly by region. Natural gas is common in some areas, but not others. My current province has abundant hydroelectricity, and rather cold winters, and most people heat their houses electrically. Where I grew up, there is no domestic natural gas system, though some businesses and houses have propane delivered by truck; home heating fuel oil was very common there, but that is changing. Heat pumps are becoming more and more common.)
Home heating oil (you are probably talking about number 2 fuel oil, which I think is the same as diesel) is much heavier than kerosene. All of these will evaporate if you get them hot enough. Coleman fuel easily evaporates on its own, while heavier fuels usually don't evaporate completely. This is true of kerosene, which mostly will evaporate unless it is cold, but I wouldn't say that there is no residue left behind. I think the charcoal lighter fluid is a little bit lighter than kerosene, but heavier than Coleman fuel. Picture of the Crown kerosene next to Coleman fuel on the shelf. You want K1 or 1K grade for stoves. The Coleman fuel is about $15 a gallon here.
Good reply! I have two comments: 1. You need to get a more modern heat pump. They have come leaps and bounds from what they were just a few years ago and do a GREAT job extracting the head from really cold air. 2 There is an EXTREME difference between any of those solvents and oils and naphtha/coleman/panel wipe/gasoline. The term stoddard solvent is so all-over-the-map these days on its actual content as to be useless to me. It used to be naphtha. Now, it could be mineral spirits or who knows. I can tell you this, if you think charcoal lighter fluid is close to Coleman fuel/naphtha, think again. Try lighting your charcoal with Coleman fuel and after the BOOM!, you can pick up the smoldering lumps if you can find them, along with your hair and eyebrows, as they will be scattered all over the place. The major difference it their volatility. You can spill paint thinners, lamp oils, and kerosene and toss lit cigarettes on it all day long. Do that with naphtha, and you'll be running for a fire extiquisher a second later. My recommendation to the OP is to blend off his stock of non naphtha lamp oils and solvents with whatever brand or clean kerosene he decides to stick with. I strongly recommend against using lamp oils and solvents unless you are certain they will burn clean and safe in your usage. The cost difference isn't worth the headaches IMO. Knowing that you CAN burn these things in a pinch is golden, though. Ok, a third: How much fuel do you plan on burning per day/week/month/year? What is reliability worth to you? After burning this stuff, have you completely broken your stove down and inspected it for residual gunk? How long did you run each fuel? A 5 or ten minute test burn isn't going to tell you much about how it will perform over weeks and months. My recommendation is save your money elsewhere and get good, proven fuels.
Thank you for the further information about fuels, MissileMike. Clearly I was, and may still be, rather confused about the different types. When I said that I thought that my charcoal lighter fluid smelled like naphtha, I said that on the (mis)understanding that “zippo-type lighter fluid = naphtha”. Am I as mistaken there as I was with “number 2 fuel oil = kerosene”? I really don’t mind paying a little more for good fuel, whose cost pales in comparison to the stove itself - but I would rather not waste money if, for example, cheaper fuel B was just as good for my use-case as more expensive fuel A. However, it is more that I would rather use up what I have first, so as not to accumulate and store more combustible fuels inside a city apartment than necessary, again if there is no good reason to do so. All the advice and information I gained here is very useful, so thanks again.
No sweat, I'm here to learn as well as pass on what I know. Zippo fuel IS naphtha. Charcoal lighter is usually like dirty kerosene. But there is likely no federal standard for what can go into charcoal lighter fluid or pain thinner. #2 fuel oil is basically diesel fuel without the road tax and is ususally dyed red. Most of these petrochemicals contain a wide variety of hydrocarbon chains. You aren't going to be able to buy cheap pure anything that ends in -ane. Which it what we'd all like, right. Separating all those "anes" is expensive. You can get some cheaper than others. Most of this stuff used to be by products of gasoline production. Gasoline used to be a waste byproduct of kerosene production and whale bones were the byproduct of kerosene's predecessor. But what we purchase as gasoline, or kerosene, or diesel fuel is not a specific molecule. It is a range of different molecules that more or less have close to the same behavior. Breaking it down further to specific molecules can be prohibitively expensive. But they do that, mostly for labs and industries that require certain specific hydrocarbons like pentane and hexane, which is used to extract oil from grain. Yes cooking oil. See hexane extraction. Fairly recent chemistry discoveries, particularly in catalysts, has made it possible to get more gasoline out of a barrel of oil that ever before. Guess what took a hit for that discovery? Everything else that used to be cheap, like kerosene, diesel fuel, naphtha, etc etc. The further down the cracking tower you go, the longer the hydrocarbon chains, the more energy dense it is, and the nastier it is, generally speaking, like asphalt and bunker oil used in ocean going ships. But now, they can take a good portion of that nasty stuff and literally break those chains into multiple shorter chains of cleaner, more desirable and profitable products that usually come from way higher on the cracking tower. There is now very little waste. And they can crack these products and much lower temperatures than in the past. Now they have catalytic processes that join small chains into bigger ones. For instance Naphtha can be joined in a process called unification to make gasoline. The result? Gasoline stays relatively cheap and just about everything else gets more expensive. If the stove and lantern folks like us numbered in the tens of millions, there might be sufficient demand to leave good old naphtha and kerosene alone. But where does kerosene mostly go? Jet/gas turbine fuel. Every condensation trail you see in the sky is burning OUR BELOVED KEROSENE! Hint, hint. Make friends with your local Fixed Base Operator at you local airport that services general aviation and you may be able to purchase some Jet-A from them way cheaper than you can buy it at a home center. Though this will probably be changing soon, don't buy gasoline at an airport. It's 100 octane low lead. Not unleaded. Will it burn ok? Sure, but that lead does not burn, it goes into the air and maybe your food. Tetraethyl lead is the reason Coleman fuel exists. I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but if there was an awesome, cheap alternative to what's out there, THIS would be the place to learn about it. Look, I've been there. At one time I went to the Home Depot, lowes and some auto supply stores and bought a little of everything I though could possibly burn in a stove. I learned that I wasted my money. I also learned that THOUSANDS of folks like you and me have done it before. Some will lie and tell you they used their Coleman 502 on diesel fuel for years and never had to clean the generator. But I know for a fact that is not possible. You got a nice stove that will burn just about anything flammable. Do your experiments and log your notes. Put it through its paces for a full tank and inspect the inner workings. Document it and post it here. That's be a helluva read for me at least. If you don't mind disassembling and cleaning it in the field where if you drop a part you're screwed, knock yourself out. To me a stove is a survival tool as well as a toy. Treat it as if your life depends on it. Because it may. When you go on a long journey, take plenty of good fuel and figure some extra or have it cached ahead of you on your trip so you can pick it up along your journey. If you run out, go to the nearest place that sells flammables and pull out your notes. There is one thing you can get just about everywhere that sells stuff though. Gasoline. If you bought a new car would you try to run it on paint thinner? Or would you put quality approved fuel in it that would ensure the longest engine life? Just sayin. Enjoy the hobby and your journeys. Don't sweat the small stuff and get wrapped around the axle over a few bucks worth of fuel. Consider your fuel a fixed cost like it is with most thing in life.
Thanks again MissileMike. Your discussion about cracking and synthesis vs distillation was particularly helpful.
I have many many stoves, and even though as a helicopter pilot I get free Jet-A from work, stoves use such a small amount of fuel, and run so much nicer on coleman naptha, that I just buy that. Especially when its cold. I have a polaris omnifuel as well. The jet is sized at a compromise to allow multiple fuels and so doesn't seem to be ideal for any one fuel, hense the common pulsing. Ive wanted to see if the jet from an msr dragonfly would fit in the polaris as it is a great stove otherwise.
Thanks, Helidriver. As i mentioned in my original post, I will be happy to buy better fuel in the future, but if possible I would also prefer to use up (some) of what I have, so as not to store excessive amounts of fuel inside my apartment. As well I want to learn what I can reasonably burn as alternatives, since part of the reason for getting this stove was to have something that can burn a wide range of fuels in case of emergencies. For emergencies and potentially changing or mixed or variable fuels, a single jet design was very appealing. I knew that the single jet was going to be a compromise, but as this is my first pressurized liquid fuel, I didn’t really know what exactly the compromise would be. Thanks for explaining that the “helicoptering” or pulsing is just part of that compromise. It’s all starting to make more sense.
I originally wanted a Svea 123. Then I chose this Polaris for winter camping, emergency cooking backup at home (power outages etc), and future expeditions - and I think it will be great for those - but the shiny brass 123 kept whispering to me, so I just got one too! Its flutter is charming indeed.
Multifuel capability in stoves is great for emergencies or if you're traveling through foreign countries where fuel options are limited. However, if you have a CHOICE then the only two stove fuels you should ever consider burning in one of these stoves are white gas (Coleman Fuel) and K1 Kerosene. Burning automotive gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, or heating oil is a nasty stinky sooty affair that will require constant stove maintenance not to mention breathing in unhealthy fumes. And I wouldn't even burn aviation gasoline in an emergency since it's usually leaded, there are always other ways of boiling and cooking.
