I stand corrected. Has anyone tried a cocktail? Methanol for volatility, isopropanol for high BTU value, and ethanol for good measure. Stirred, not shaken, of course.
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alcohol stove fuel (Trangia)
- Thread starter Odyssey
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I stand corrected. Has anyone tried a cocktail? Methanol for volatility, isopropanol for high BTU value, and ethanol for good measure. Stirred, not shaken, of course.
Even denatured alcohol sometimes burns sooty yellow. An old trick to remedy this is to add a small amount of water to the fuel. Why this works to help it burn cleaner I do not know. But you can have a lot of fun with unsuspecting friends and your water bottle, demonstrating how your stove cooks by "burning water" with a little pour into the stove burner from your drinking source.
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dang I've ben using Trangia for at least 20 years, and never had a problem winter summer fall spring, from -30c to plus 30c always worked!!
I don't think that there is any measurable benefit to mixing fuels, but a blend of Methanol and Ethanol might be easier to light in cold weather. Trangia has a method of preheating their stove in cold weather. It seems to me to amount to placing the stove in a saucer, adding some alcohol to the saucer and setting it on fire. I recently got a Chinese Trangia clone and it's performance is about 2/3 of the real thing. I only noticed a small difference in boiling times between Methanol and Denatured Alcohol. Wind seems to be the biggest factor in stove performance and a good windscreen makes a huge difference. I have a Trangia series 27 cookset, with their windscreen, but have never tried it in the wind.
my original Trangia burner has a little square cloth patch attached to the bottom. The idea is to put a small bit of alcohol on that patch, ignite it, and it preheats the reservoir of fuel in the burner. It has always worked well in cold temps.
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