Looking for new liquid multi-fuel stove for camping/hiking

A good price.

 

Hmmm.
About a 60/40 split with Klean Strip.
Anyone else recall that it used to be more ethanol?

 

I believe that 'standard' US denatured alcohol was mostly ethanol, with the added methanol denaturant. But I can't actually say so for sure. It comes from discussions as to what denatured alcohol was, many decades ago.

 

After fiddling away a perfectly good afternoon holed up in my garage boiling water over an alcohol stove, here is what I came up with:



As expected, the higher energy fuels (Crown & 190 proof) took less than the Methanol to boil the water. Also not surprising, the ones with lots of Methanol (Crown & HEET) worked the fastest. The one that did well in both aspects was Crown fuel, which isn't surprising in that it's specifically formulated for the job.

What I can't figure out is Crown's recipe. It's listed as having 65% - 75% methanol, 20% -30% denatured alcohol (which I take is mostly ethanol), up to 10% isopropyl & 0 - 10% Methyl isobutyl ketone (whatever that is). So depending on what the actual percentages are, this stuff could well have a heat content comparable to 95% Ethanol.

So to summarize: in terms of cost and availability, HEET is still the winner. Crown fuel looks by far like the best technical performer, albeit at roughly twice the price.

And 190 proof is prefered by those of us who occasionally like to take a swig out of the fuel bottle.

 

Walmart has Crown fuel for $7.64 a gallon near me.

Crown White Gas Camp Fuel for Use in Gasoline Stoves and Lanterns, 1 Gallon - Walmart.com

 

"Price when purchased online"

 

This is what you guys want to see

 

Yes, finding it "in stock" often doesn't work for me and, the last thing I want after a ~45-mile trip each way to Walmart is to find it is sold out! Yes, I live in a rural area and Walmart isn't very close to me. I have been burned more than once learning Walmart was out of stock of Cornbread mix, milk, yogurt, soup mixes, soup beans, pasta, transmission oil, oil filters for my car, underwear in my size, Rotella motor oil, 20w Motor Oil, ...

I order everything I really need before I leave the house for curbside pick up so, I come home with what I really need without hitting multiple grocery stores, general stores, automotive stores, etc. I also pre-order from Lowes, Home Depot, etc. for the same reason.

 

Needs to be made clear that the Crown Fuel tested is alcohol fuel. Not the more common Crown naptha/white gas.

There seems to be some confusion. It could lead to problems. One has nothing to do with the other.

 

Yes!! Alcohol only discussion.

 

This is a Multi-Fuel discussion.

Topic...
Looking for new liquid multi-fuel stove for camping/hiking

 

SDS from Crown.

 

Snwcmpr-

I stand corrected. I meant to say I was referring to Crown alcohol fuel.

Interesting SDS. It's a bit different from my source - which shows that they probably tweak it from time to time. I would love to know what it's actual heat content is. Also curious what the Methyl Isobutyl Ketone is in there for.

-Paul

 

Nonetheless, I'd discourage the use of "Crown Fuel", the Walmart-sold product with which many of us are familiar, in an alcohol stove.

 

In case ....
The Crown fuel in the video is denatured alcohol.

 

The other variable is the ambient temperature. If it's cold out, I don't dilute ethanol with water - both for easier ignition but also because the increased density of the air improves the air/fuel mix in an open burner like a Trangia. It's only when it's hot that the water dilution is worthwhile IMO.

BTW the Trangia burner is naturally rich by design. Alcohol burner design is a compromise between speed and efficiency. Trangia leans towards speed without being silly about it, in keeping with the requirement to boil 1.5litres in a reasonable time.

If you want a lean, efficient burner that won't soot then the wicking burners are what you want. Like the ones used by Origo and Speedster stoves. Great for the right air / fuel mix and therefore efficiency but some consider them to be as slow as a wet week! Not really something you would want to use for family cooking. Think of the Trangia's soot as the price paid for a faster burn...

MEK is also known as butanone. It is commonly used as a denaturant for alcohol because its taste resembles acetone. It is closely related to denatonium, which is used over here in the land of Oz because it is the bitterest chemical available which is also non-toxic. Is has the added benefit of being an azeotrope in water (ethanol absorbs water from the air which is why it's only possible to buy 95% ethanol commercially), which means the taste can't be distilled out from denatured alcohol either by those who would try such a thing (people have tried).

These days, it's not enough to denature ethanol with just methanol - methanol tastes much the same as ethanol. First, people (including kids) can potentially still potentially drink it and poison themselves so adding something overwhelmingly bitter and distasteful is required to prevent that, without increasing toxicity or carcinogenicity. Second, alcoholics would drink the cheaply available ethanol / methanol mixtures in order to get themselves admitted to hospital with methanol poisoning - because the medical treatment for methanol poisoning is the injection of pure ethanol on a drip. Adding an incredibly bitter compound is required to prevent that too... and that means you can also remove the methanol. So denatured alcohol in Australia is now 95% ethanol and a trace amount of denatonium, with the rest being water. Ironically, it's now perfectly safe to drink - just incredibly difficult - even for the most hard-core alcoholics. Now alcoholics have to find methanol specifically if they want to get methanol poisoning, which is much more difficult to find than regular denatured alcohol (ironically, still called methylated spirits over here, even though it doesn't have methanol anymore).

In short, the objectionable smell / taste of denatured alcohol we all know is due to the addition of MEK / denatonium or similar denaturants.

 

Alcoholic-

Thanks for the info! That was very interesting.

I also came across the bit about using ethanol as a treatment for methanol poisoning - but I didn't ever imagine that some folks would deliberately poison themselves to get the treatment. Wow. Sobering thought, if you'll pardon the pun.

I'm also interested in your point about burning fuel rich to increase heat output. The Trangia has about 24 holes in it - the designs I have been working on have 36. I found the more holes (and larger diameter) I had, the more BTUs. Based on time-to-boil, my stoves put out about 38% more heat, but I strongly suspect I'm burning rich and there's a bit of unburned alcohol in the exhaust. Maybe there's an optimum #holes for proper stoichiometry?

-Paul

 

I can't really comment on the number of holes as I'm no expert on burner design but as a general rule of thumb, getting the proper stoichiometry for alcohol requires holding back the fuel supply in comparison to air. Wicking stoves do this quite well at the expense of speed / heat output. As do pressure stoves. An open air burner though can only do this to a limited extent (hence the holes) and to the extent that it does this it will make it both more efficient and slower to burn. AFAIK, the only way to achieve both the right stoichiometry with high speed and high efficiency (the holy grail, if you will) is to use a pressure stove with the right jet size. But of course you lose the bulletproof reliability of an open burner like the Trangia's. Personally, I find the Trangia speed / efficiency / reliability trade-off to be the best of all worlds...

 

There's a proper doctoral thesis in this for somebody with a rather large computer and a lot of software. All I can do is experiment with beer cans.

 

And a lot of beer cans, of course.