Charcoal Lighter Fluid as an alternative fuel

For my WLU, it takes enough alcohol to preheat for kerosene that I could cook a meal in a Trangia! I cut down a soda pop can to a few centimeters tall to make a light, second preheat cup. Based on my experience, I will only burn kerosene in the stove if I have no other alternative. For me it is a third string fuel in the WLU. Brad

 

My WLU is horrible with kerosene unless seriously preheated. Once going it’s nice. I don’t bother with kerosene in it anymore

 

Add a wick to the preheat cup of the WLU.

 

I find the wick actually does more harm than help because it tends to cause the alcohol fireball to become a bit uncontrolled for the burn. In my experience the flame tends to be more controlled minus the wick as the alcohol is slower vaporizing and thus doesn't fireball as aggressively. Of course it takes longer to preheat. Maybe the wick is a different story when it comes to running it on white gas or kerosene but I try to prime with alcohol or otherwise with a butane torch when it comes to kerosene.

I would look into using something like a metallic bottle cap or a little empty tea candle to stick underneath the priming cup proper to allow for a double priming as the WLU needs a lot of heat to properly run kerosene.

As an update for the experiment of using CLF as a filler fuel: Bumping the ratio so that it is around 3 parts kerosene, 2 parts CLF and 1 part white gas doesn't produce any more odors than the typical kerosene smell, which itself seems to be a combination of factors like how hot the stove is and how pressurized the fuel bottle is. At least it seems just some fraction of white gas added to CLF seems to neutralize the CLF combustion stink when used in combination with kerosene. I will try upping the ratio later to see how far I can go as it would be attractive to be able to run it CLF rich relative to the ratios of other fuels as it is inexpensive and widely available.

It seems to generate excessive odor if the stove operates at high pressure (...for the sake of high output) or otherwise at low pressure and at "simmer" settings (blue flame but stinky) and this is more of a characteristic of the kerosene than the CLF.

 

My reply followed a comment on kerosene. I meant to use a wick with kerosene.

 

An update on CLF experiments as I think I hit a mix that doesn't stink terribly when it comes to the WLU:
3 parts kerosene, 6-8 parts CLF and 1 part white gas, give or take and possibly with even more CLF as I eyeballed the fuel amount out in the bottle as more CLF was added to the previous mix.

This mixture seems to be the best so far, it is relatively easy to warm up/light without it acting like white gas being that the CLF is between kerosene and white gas for combustibility but it is easier to heat up like white gas. There is a faint bit of the CLF stink when the stove isn't fully warmed up. Once the burner begins to glow nice and red and with the valve being not fully wide open then it seems to stabilize to the point that there is only the faintest bit of the kerosene fumes coming through occasionally when the wind pushes the flame off the generator.

It seems to be a limitation of the WLU with CLF but it definitely doesn't play well with using CLF straight or from adding it to kerosene as those cases seem to cause the CLF to be incompletely combusted which leads to a distinct stench as previously noted. The addition of a little bit of white gas seems to mostly fix this problem. The lessening of the kerosene smell from both the mixture and the faint bit of kerosene during combustion was helpful too.

The downside of this experiment with the WLU is there needs to be 3 fuel types in a mix rather than being able to use CLF to "stretch" out a single supply of white gas or kerosene.

 

Tested the WLU with far, far more CLF ratio wise: I'd estimate it as being somewhere around 15-20 parts CLF, 3 parts kerosene and "a splash" of white gas to the existing amount from above, a splash being a tiny amount. At first I thought I had a successful mix when it came to running it with a heat exchanger kettle which raised the bottom of the kettle about close to 3/4" over the leg supports. There were no intense odors aside from a sort of faint sweet flowery odor and occasional miniscule bit of CLF combustion stink in the mix.

Then I put a 10" stainless steel pan on it, initially there was a faint bit of CLF stink but it went away once it heated up. Then I decided to "sniff" the area above the pan... Yikes. the CLF stink was readily present and while less nasty than running it straight with CLF I would not even remotely use this mix in any environment where the fumes get trapped overhead. At least the area "around" didn't stink super badly but the fumes going up was pretty bad and I wouldn't want to be down wind of that.

The only upside to this is that I have found the WLU "can" run a high ratio of CLF, it just needs enough white gas in the mix and some kerosene in addition, the ratios can't be padded out to extremes without the pan, pot or whatever being placed on the WLU being raised so the flame doesn't quench as much. The more height the better.

 

The Omnilite Ti with the silencer cap seems to be more than capable of running CLF at around 1:1:1 (kerosene:CLF:white gas) to approx 2:5:3 if not a little richer on the CLF once it is sufficiently heated up. This is done with the white gas jet rather than the kerosene jet as mine has been drilled out for operation with alcohol.

I will continue to add CLF to this fuel mix as it is consumed to see how high the mixture can go before unpleasant odors become apparent but it does not seem to produce the "combustion stink" as much at those ratios.

At worst there is a faint smell that I can only describe as being something like stale water but "chemical like" when I am standing downwind of the pot when it some wind blows against the flame and interrupts a little bit of the combustion. It otherwise does not seem to be too intense and is only present when I directly "smell" it rather than being a nasty stink that overwhelms everything.

There is some stink during lighting off from some of the fuel escaping as a vapor in my experimentation so far, but I am holding the lighter further away to test a hypothesis on cap underburn, this may go away if the tip of the jet flame is right up against the silencer when the valve is opened up. There is also a small bit of stink let off on closing the valve on the stove side. I have avoided staying around the stove after flipping the bottle but I am fairly certain it will stink things up like the WLU when air is purged through.

There is the caveat of the Omnilite Ti with the silencer cap being nonresistant to clogging for the jet which will cause the fuel mixture to become too lean and induce underburn with the cap. The jet can be cleaned to resolve these issues but it is a pain:
Orange flames with Omnilite Ti silencer

 

The Omnilite Ti with the silencer seems to be able to do ratios as high as 2:10+:3 with CLF. Once preheated and without any jet cloggage (more on that later) it will happily run the stove all the way down and maintain heat. If anything the bit of underburn from the lower output settings seems to prevent the stove from cooling off too much in the realm of the "super simmer" (which I estimate to be under 500 btu output wise). There is a slight, slight bit of that "chemical" vapor that I believe smells a little like chlorine when the stove is running at such low settings. It goes away when output is cranked up to 100%.

If the Omnilite Ti seems to output some yellow flames when cranked up and it doesn't "improve" then the top of the cap is cool. This is especially a problem with heat exchanger pots that raise the bottom surface of the pot over the burner. The vaporized fuel is cooling the top of the cap and this can be rectified by lightly hitting the top of the cap with a jet lighter while the stove is on at a very low setting to "warm up" the top surface. CLF seems to have a high boiling point and that is causing the vapors to cool the cap off and causes some of the vapor to condense back into a liquid after striking the top of the cap. Once the entire cap is hot it seems to be fairly resistant to yellow flames even at high settings but I suspect the jet has closed up slightly in operation.

A caveat about clogging: It seems that the Omnilite Ti with this fuel combination is best primed "dry": That is with no fuel being let through the spindle with the stove side valve closed. A good amount of alcohol and ignition after the flame goes out seems to prevent the clogging that occurs from the jet closing up during the priming.

 

The Soto Muka will run on a mix of about 1:1 to 1:2 white gas to charcoal lighter fluid. Like the Stormbreaker it takes a little longer to quick start the stove because of how resistant CLF is to ignition. I have noticed that unless the stove has spent some time heating itself up or until a pot is placed onto it, there is a faint stinkiness in the combustion odor but especially so at the lower power settings (I assume there's not enough vaporization going on with the CLF).

Once pot is on it and the Muka is cranked up (but not wide open, there's too many btus coming out of it!) then it kind of disappears. The Jetboil 5L pot would be "overwhelmed" with the flame hitting the heat exchanger and the stinkiness of the CLF returning if the Muka was running at max blast. Somewhere around "half way" and with just enough bottle pressure to avoid having the red line show was sufficient for odor free combustion and rapid heating of 3L of water.

As the Muka has the odd setup with the screw in the jet along with the two mesh screens and the more difficult to clean generator design unlike the Stormbreaker. I would not recommend doing this unless necessary and if there's a will to try to refurbish the generator at some point. That or maybe when gasoline is the only other alternative because it seems CLF doesn't really cause much more than a little bit of loose carbon to build up rather than nasty deposits like unleaded.

I have had good luck with CLF being "clean burning" beyond a bit of easily knocked off carbony dust in the Stormbreaker when the spring inside the generator was run through but the Muka is kind of a weird exotic unicorn of a stove with how Soto treats the generator more like it is a consumable from what I assume is less than clean burning fuels like gasoline.

So far in my experiences it seems like CLF works well in stoves that don't use a generator but instead have a heat concentrator setup. I will find out later if this hypothesis holds up with something like the XGK EX at some point.

 

The Muka so far seems to be the second best stove in my collection when it comes to running CLF with a little bit of white gas in it. I pushed it up to something like 1:10-15 at this point and it still ran. Starting it was a pain just like the Stormbreaker.

With the stove cold, it simply will not light when there's so much CLF in the fuel. A little cloud of aerosolized fuel comes out and hits the naked flame of a huge butane torch and simply will not light off. I had to massage the generator with a flame for a few seconds before it ignited off. At that point care should be taken to run the stove in start mode and occasionally switch it to air to ensure the flame stays blue.

Once running the Muka seems to hold up pretty well beyond a slight faint odor under some conditions, like when the stove has been switched over from quick starting to normal operation and otherwise when running it at lower outputs. Due to what is the higher amount of heat needed to boil CLF, it doesn't like being run at low settings and can go out if left unattended at lower power levels.

Conversely too much pressure and running the Muka on high causes the stove to flare with unvaporized fuel as it has a higher boiling point and overwhelms the generator. However the Muka seems to be running at "full blast" long before the flare. At least for me anyways, the flame tips shoot off the sides of a 14" stainless steel pot.

So long as the Muka runs "hot enough" it generally burns with a little to no odor at such a high concentration. I will have to burn through the rest of the bottle and inspect the generator, the mesh screens, the jet and screw afterwards. In my experience the Stormbreaker does have a little bit of carbon buildup to the point a few pieces are caught in the screen and maybe a piece gets into the jet. Since it seems to be just easily removed carbon dust buildup it shouldn't hurt the Muka. In the case of the Omnilite Ti there's very little buildup beyond a little bit of carbon that simply wipes off with a tissue.

So I would say maybe running the Muka at maybe 1:4-8 parts shouldn't hurt it. Going higher means stinkiness issues and general difficulty of start meaning a little bit of a prime from alcohol or a jet torch is needed. At 1:1 or 1:2 I don't think it is that noticeable even beyond the Muka being "slower" starting. The Muka seems to be a faster starting stove than the Stormbreaker anyways and I find running the "start" valve setting a little bit off and towards off to reduce the flame makes it less wasteful when starting up anyways.

 

Doubled the amount with the Muka to 1:20-30+ at this point and it burns fairly well. Heating the stove up (see unrecommended starting procedure) eliminates most of the initial stench from startup beyond the startup flame being a little incomplete in combustion and leaving that CLF odor. Once switched over to run it runs quite reliably. With the body sufficiently hot I can get the Muka down to a sort of lower output without it going out too quickly so long as it is attended and the valve setting bumped up to prevent a yellow flame for more than a few seconds.

Unrecommended starting procedure: Alcohol can be carefully poured into the burner head of the Muka to "aide" in starting nasty fuels like CLF. With the body being a sort of a cup structure on the inside, the alcohol goes inside and doesn't really leak back out. Lighting it off will allow for it to heat the body and generator up which means a more "normal" startup can be done by waiting for the flame to go out and then putting the pump in the run position and lighting it off and with the quick start flame. Since the body is already hot and the generator is a bit hot it will let the CLF mixture vaporize sufficiently and light off quickly rather than taking close to a minute to get the stove hot enough for CLF (as the CLF gas hits the "cold" stove body after the jet and likely condenses).

I suspect the Muka and Stormbreaker can be alcohol started with a non Soto pump (modern Primus pump) and/or adapter (like the Stormbreaker's lindal adapter) if absolutely necessary. A little cup with alcohol placed under the Stormbreaker's head would be more than overkill to heat the generator to temperature, alternatively splashing the burner head would be more than sufficient when it comes to white gas but I advise against using a lot of alcohol on the Stormbreaker as it can spill down and singe the silicone boot over the fuel line (personal experience, whoops).

Going back again: Adding CLF to white gas at some lower ratio likely makes a "safer" but harder starting white gas regardless of the stove. It is "cheap" as a fuel if inexpensive white gas isn't available when price/volume is calculated for.

 

The MSR XGK EX happily burns mostly CLF once it gets heated up. It does pretty well from a little bit of alcohol to prime with a little bit of fuel in the fuel line. I say "mostly CLF" as there is mostly CLF with little amounts of white gas, 91% isopropyl alcohol (and close to 9% water in that fraction) and little amounts of kerosene in there.

I recommend doing an alcohol prime to avoid the stinkiness of self priming with CLF. I leave the fuel line empty and let it preheat for some time before the flames begin to die down a little. Then I open the valve up a little and let a small yellow flame build up in the jet. Before the alcohol flame dies down, I open the valve a little more to get a partial roar and leave it there to let it finish the warmup process as the flame tends to be blue-ish rather than yellow at that point.

It vaporizes a little easier than kerosene and keeps a blue flame at lower throttle settings. If anything I find that I need to pump the bottle up from very low pressures (An additional 20-30 pumps after the initial 5-15 with a 2/3 full bottle) as the low end tends to be a little too low for a blue flame.

Initially there's some of the distinct stinkiness when initially started but when sufficiently hot to the point the flame is completely blue and the bell glowing around the edges then it otherwise is odor free or odor minimal. It is better than when running it on mostly kerosene from what I've experienced so far with my initial usage of it.

Shutdown via bottle flip will of course produce the stink cloud of hot vaporized CLF. MSR's fuel lines tend to have a lot of retention of fuel so depressurization of the bottle tends to still leave CLF in the fuel line that slowly boils. I think it'd be better to just shut the valve after the initial air pressure purge to blow clear as much of the CLF from the system and then disconnect the stove. I can still smell a bit of kerosene after a long depressurization and the fuel line will happily drip from the steel wire inside. CLF when not hot doesn't stink horribly in contrast.

I'd rate it a little behind the Omnilite Ti which seems to just not really produce any stink on CLF. I'd say it ties with the Soto Muka with my initial impressions so far but the Muka doesn't go as low as the XGK EX but that might be a bottle pressure problem as I find the XGK EX happily runs mostly CLF with very little bottle pressure.

 

Man, talk about over thinking and talking far too much about stove fuel. Charcoal lighter is an excellent choice for kero substitute. That's all you need to know.

 

It doesn't seem to behave like kerosene nor white gas in my experience. It has less of the energy density than kerosene and burns "less hot" relative to the generator due to the higher flash point. It only burns truly cleanly in some stoves that I've tested so far like the Omnilite Ti.

I only post this out of reference as I run it through more of my liquid fuel stoves as it seems they all have different performance characteristics with it. I like to experiment with fuel and I started off running many of my stoves by enlarging a jet so that they could run off isopropyl alcohol because it lacked the nastiness of inhalation.

CLF seems to be one of those interesting fuels right now as it has less fireball factor than white gas and it is a little cheaper and will likely stay that way based off of it being a commodity item if there's ever a day that white gas and kerosene stop being options or become priced to the point there it isn't affordable to run.

 

Interesting dissertation, all I'm concerned about is this: CLF burns hot and clean in my kero burners here, cut it with Coleman fuel, and and it works fine in anything that burns CF or VM&P naptha. Everytime I've been looking on the forums, it seems that those damn MSR tinkertoys are all but trouble all the time, cracked pumps, leaking fuel bottles and feed lines, bad pump seals, all to save a gram or three for the gram weenies. IMO, these don't seem like the kind of equipment I'd bet my life on, not if I'm traveling solo or with a small team.

Murph

 

...and if a picture paints a thousand words, here's two thousand:-

 

Some very long term reports in regards to running more than a gallon through an Optimus Polaris Optifuel and Nova+ (two of them even but lots of use on the Nova+):
The addition of greater than 10% and up to 20% anhydrous isopropyl alcohol makes the flame completely blue or nearly completely blue (near 10%) to the point that the little brief bits of orange/red that occasionally come out when running any fuel goes away. I think the sweet spot is below 20% and maybe closer to 15% or lower as CLF needs less oxygenation than kerosene. Furthermore it makes priming less messy as (much) less soot is generated and I generally don't notice a build up of "hard" soot deposits.

And furthermore from long term use: It does not coke. I noticed kerosene (with or without alcohol added) caused the spindle on the Nova+ to form a bit of carbon buildup behind the threads after enough runs. Nothing built up to any extent that caused clogging but I could see problems in the long run. In contrast running CLF and pulling the spindle out between uses I would see a little bit of browned fuel from the heat but on wiping the spindle it would expose clean metal again. Either way using a butane jet torch I can clean the spindle off but CLF deposits blast right off rather than needing the spindle to be heated until it has a dull glow while being held there to burn off hard deposits from kerosene usage.

CLF and kerosene are different fuels in the US for certain, I've smelled both enough to know that kerosene and lamp oil (further refined/deodorized kerosene) has different characteristics along with kerosene having a higher boiling point.

 

From my experience with Charcoal lighter fluid in the US. It is most certainly neither kerosene, nor is it naptha (Coleman fuel). CLF seems to be an intermediate between the two. It's obviously less of a fire hazard than naptha, but not by much, and more so than kerosene. When spilled, CLF will evaporate much faster than kerosene will, but much slower naptha. It burns poorly in my 502 stove, with a terrible odor, but it burns extremely well in a 200a lantern. It seems to be just too heavy for white gas stoves, and just too light for many, though not all kerosene stoves. (Hot CLF in a fuel tank will generate greater pressure than hot kerosene) From what I've read CLF was used to fuel a high altitude spy plane and the fuel was called LF-1 (lighter fluid-1) and that this fuel had higher resistance to coking than kerosene (jp-8) had.

CLF seems like a very promising fuel for stoves but I've yet to see anything purpose built to run it. If a stove was built around this fuel, I'm sure it would work very, very well, with low cost (unlike Coleman fuel) and easy availability (unlike kerosene). This stove would have to be built more like a kerosene stove, with an ability to better preheat the fuel before being sprayed out, but I think it could get away with slightly less preheat than what is required in a kerosene stove.

 

Thanks for your insights on your usage of CLF.

The resistance to coking is interesting since I noticed that behavior in regards to the Nova+ spindle. I am not sure if what I am using as California specific ("California Air Resource Board" / CARB) CLF is related to LF1. The flash point seems a bit more variable and higher compared to the specifications of JPTS/LF-1 as CLF can be close to 70-80C on the upper end. Maybe that might be the California specific CLF bit.

In regards to preheat/generator issues, I've found that the addition of sufficient alcohol lets it behave like a very "heavy" white gas, enough so that stoves like the Lixada white gas stove will burn it.

I don't have the means to determine tank pressure however so I wouldn't be able to report that bit of information was something I was unaware of.

At present prices ($6.74/64oz) the BTU/$ for CLF is 8432. That is a downgrade from 2 years ago at 11937 thanks to inflation. At present prices of $7.64/gal for Crown or 16911BTU/$ and $14.47/gal for Coleman fuel or 8929BTU/$. So in a case of only overpriced quart cans of white gas it is still a viable substitute but not so much presently. For using it to "tame" white gas by making it less ignitable, kerosene in a gallon jug has it beat at $10.87/gal or 11248BTU/$ but will likely have odor to it.

On a sad note with the price of automotive gasoline in California (well past $6.40), Crown white gas actually looks "cheap" for once as a ratio against regular unleaded.