Not hard dc current with a large surface area, ie steel wool , a tube to lead h2 through bubbler chamber (safety) , a tube to storage ( air mattress) , a tube to a tin can full of sand (radiator) , add o2 and ignite. Don't worry about storing h2 in a polymer bag(fuel) nothing to see there.
What about a rocket stove in an antique ,barrel size wood stove....could you make a metal liner inside it ( so no ash pan acceptability ) pack it with cleaned sand for a heat battery . Air flow extend fuel channel to the old doors vent if necessary,😳⁉️
@@johnschneider931 -- Everyone always leaves out the reality that it costs more for the electricity to release the hydrogen from water then the hydrogen is worth! This process is only viable if you can get your electricity for FREE -- or nearly so -- perhaps from what I call "surplus solar" = that solar power one can harvest *after* their battery bank is fully charged.
@@JIMPETERSON-n7i One can always run hydrogen to a catalytic converter. That is welded to a steel plate. The hydrogen will react to the metal in a cadillac converter and produce fire.
I have a set of ceramic logs that use alcohol fuel --- the logs stack up around, and conceal, a rack, where you put the cans of alcohol gel fuel, so the flames come up between the logs for a realistic looking wood fire without the mess. I saved a set of the cans from my last case of commercial fuel after finding a forumla for making my own (that is much less expensive). The commercial cans have lids I can use to snuff the flame, but love the idea of using the bean tins. The logs took the place of the grate in my wood burning fireplace, look wonderful, and I don't have to fully open the damper, sending all the heat up the chimney! I am now inspired to buy one of those little stoves for using as heat in my garage this winter when I want to do some wood crafting, plant potting, etc. Thanks for the inspiration!
I was just going to mention all the water vapor that adds humidity into the house from burning alcohol not to mention the CO poisoning in my new doses. Carbon monoxide poisoning is a cumulative in small doses that do not leave your body rapidly. They do damage to the red blood cells in on daily exposure accumulate to become a lot of damage. Majority of cheap approved CO monitors work on a time, weighted average that allows you to receive small doses of CO poisoning that they consider OK until it gets to a level that exceeds a certain percentage parts per million before the alarm will go off But if you turn off the heater that time allotted. It resets the alarm back to zero and notifies the occupant that they have been exposed to carbon monoxide. So the next time they fired up, they get another exposure level as their body, red, hemoglobin, red blood cells, absorbs carbon monoxide, and it kills those cells that do not recover Under no circumstances should stove, no matter how clean looking the burning is and how clean smelling because your nose cannot smell carbon monoxide And the high water content from the oxygen, combining with the alcohol burning in the air in some localities, will put so much humidity into the building. It will cause mold to start developing in the house, depending where they live. .
I copied your original idea with the two tin cans and graphine felt and place it in my little hobbit wood burner which is free standing, it works great! I use about 1inch of biofuel (ethanol)which burns for 40 minutes and gets red hot,it heats up my lounge very quickly indeed, i couldn't get on with the methanol it smells and made our eyes sting ,biofuel is the way to go,and it looks cool too ,thanks mate for all your great videos.
I was just thinking about growing something that I can make my own alcohol out of, I got some sugarcane to make neutral alcohol for making flavor extracts for icing,fillings and other things where the alcohol flavor doesn't get cooked out but I think I need something with more sugar in it than the cane I got because it really isn't that sweet, the more sugar the higher the alcohol content I think and percentage needs to be up high enough where it will burn good. HHO might be a better choice for heat though because the hydrogen burns hotter especially mixed with the oxygen. That's a cute little stove, is it enough to heat a whole room?
Hey mate that's a clever move with the alcohol-burning stove - no pollution, real fire vibes, and getting warmth without a chimney. Impressive setup! 🔥
@@intelligenttinkering You need to look at the entire fuel cycle in order to determine the overall economics of use biofuels such as ethanol. For example, Research addressing the energy needed to grow crops and convert them to biofuels concluded that producing ethanol from corn required 29% more energy than ethanol is capable of generating.
This liquid fuel is excellent for retrofitting the older box stoves into something with clean output. It is ideal for use in stone wall basements and well houses to keep temperatures above freezing, as well as other areas that need dry heat warming in the depth of winter. The liquid fuel simplicity would be ideal for a medium sized DIY drum heater. We use ComfortBilt Pellet heaters with screened white oak pellets that are carbon neutral & negative when screened and now burning at 94% efficiency. Also the optimized Monarch wood air furnace with input vent modification and damper output tweaking and the wood pre heated upon it will burn with the interior of the firebox white as plaster dust.! That makes the renewable aspects of these hardwoods carbon neutral or even negative, since the energy is completely retrieved from the material with only smokeless clear air in the exhaust in a manner that's far less intrusive than natural decomposition.
Unless these liquid fuel heaters are vented outside, they aren't actually that dry. One of the combustion byproducts is water vapor (and a decent amount). This is fine if your place is pretty dry in the winter (natural humidifier), but not so much if it is not. And like any burner that is not getting some intake air from outside via a chimney or what not, it will reduce the oxygen in your living space noticeably if you're burning it often and larger amounts. Thankfully, when it is burning blue, it is at least not releasing CO (or very tiny amounts). But get oxygen low enough, and it doesn't matter too much if there is CO being produced or not, because unless you're very well adapted to low oxygen environments, it can cause some definite health issues and bodily side effects.
I created a methanol heater out of my titanium hot tent stove, I lined the inside with vermiculite bricks and used the heating adaptor from my camping stove to sit where the stove pipe goes to retain heat and stop the heat from going straight up and maybe marking up my low ceilings. Thanks for that suggestion, it works great and 20l of methanol costs pennies compared to turning the boiler on. With the solar my dual fuel bill is now
Ah this video takes me back, still haven't got hold of or built a woodburner, been to busy building a pond and rebuilding rotten sills on a honda, thanks for reminding me rob, i must get the gas man over to shut off the line to the fire in the living room so i can use the stone hearth 👍
I've seen alcohol stoves and I've always wondered about carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is very dangerous since it doesn't smell of anything, and will stay in your body for days. I suppose it's a risk people take with candles, but candle flames are tiny by comparison.
When you get a primarily blue flame, very little CO will be produced. But you still have to be careful of the accumulated amounts over periods of time. If your burner burns very blue, and you only use it once in a while (say to relieve the main heating system of some stress on very cold days or the like), then it should be *relatively* ok. But you definitely don't want to be using it consistently and for longer periods at a time, even with a blue flame. Problem is, is that common sense is not so common, and there is a percentage of people out there who are either too stubborn, not bright enough, and/or too knowledge deficient, who will misuse these or other burners. Ideally, Rob (and any other folks) would be least venting these out through a window insert. Besides very small amounts of CO, these also produce a lot of water vapor, and will really humidify a living space. This can be good if you live in a place with very, very dry winters, but not so much if you live in places like the mid to south East Coast, western WA and OR, the deep south, etc. The places are often moderately to moderately lowish humid even in the deepest and coldest part of winter, minus the occasional very cold days because of polar vortexes etc.
Seems a bit ridiculous on a number of levels, considering it's much cheaper and far easier to just go buy a bottle of meths. Distilling alcohol isn't exactly some great secret, even the Irish managed it.
Unless you are making your own bulk alcohol out of cheap biomass materials...alcohol as fuel is on the expensive side, especially so when you factor in the amount of BTU's per mass and volume. I do like how it burns fairly clean with the right conditions, which aren't hard to make/design. Ultimately, the "best" fuel is the cheapest fuel. Wood/biomass burning has come a long way, and there are now fairly to quite efficient systems out there. I realize that it is a real PITA and expensive to set up in the UK (and some areas in the EU), but in the US, it tends to be much less so. I have a traditional wood stove on our property. I've been thinking of ways to make it more efficient such as insulating the stove/combustion chamber better. The flue/chimney is not as long (within the inside of the house) as I would like, so a lot of heat gets wasted going up through it. I've thought of cutting holes in it and putting copper pipes through them and blowing a fan through them. We have a moderate sized hot tub only about 8 or 9 feet away from the stove, and I've though about using the water in there as a heat battery. Wrap copper tubing around the chimney and pump (probably passively) the water through it. Also have thought about putting a large, somewhat parabola shaped IR reflector behind the stove and directing it towards the doorway that the heat needs to go through (unfortunately, the wood stove is in a "sun room" [ironically named] which is directly on the ground on concrete about 4 to 5 feet lower than the rest of the house, and that is unheated. There is a door that opens up to it from the main house, and a window in a bedroom that opens up to it. Not the most efficient place for it, especially with all the 22 or so feet of large sliding glass doors. But it was the easiest place to put it, especially since our place isn't that large, and it would have been mighty awkward and too hot if put in our living room. (Gawd, how I wish our property didn't have so many trees, and I could build Solar heat collectors instead, with some Solar panels directly hooked up to nichrome wire in a very well insulated heat battery [for nighttime heating]).
But the cost of the alcohol ? It's typically around $5 per litre . That's six kilowatt/hours of energy content. $1.23 per kilowatt/hour . Do folk feel comfortable with that cost ?
Heat Recovery Ventilators are very efficient and reasonably priced. You also need ventilation to remove the moisture from the combustion air. I installed a lot of them in well insulated, multi unit buildings, that only had a tiny electric heater, plus heat generated by lights, cooking, warm bodies... There are bio-mas digesters that use human/animal waste and kitchen scraps, to make methane that are interesting.
Great idea 💡 👍 👏 Add an 20 cm (8") X 10 cm (4") thin ceramic plate above the flame and tilted 15° / forward (facing the front) top forward to spread the flame and create more radiated heat in the infrared spectrum, and maybe a small fan driven by a peltier device . That said, a source of low cost peltier devices and heat syncs for those who need a little engineering help. 😏🕊
Hey Rob! Excellent idea! Went down a small rabbit hole in google scholar trying to find materials that have selective emission bands in mid-infrared - idea being something you can chuck in the flame or have on a flat plate above the flame to make a radiant heater. Didn't find anything yet but carbon and ceramic seem to be good options, as you've already tested. That aside, have you considered or tried out burning iron powder yet? I remember watching a video on another channel where they were talking about a research team testing this as an energy dense heating solution for homes and industries while emitting no carbon. Might need a filter for the rust from the burning though.
Can you please convert a paraffin heater into a ethanol burner? My paraffin heater has the curly wire at the top that heats up and glows red hot. Maybe you could stuff that chimney with the curly metal stuff to create alot more heat?
De ce pe alcool și nu pe HIDROGEN din ELECTROLIZĂ??? Pourquoi sous alcool et pas sous HYDROGÈNE d'ÉLECTROLYSE ???Why on alcohol and not on HYDROGEN from ELECTROLYSIS???
One thing that would increase the heat output would be having a tube go thru each side that sits right over the flame. The ends of that tube have a 90 degree elbow pointing down to the ground and one pointed up. By doing this you would be heating the air and creating a simple air convection to speed up heating considerably and still get that radiant heat once the whole thing warms up. Seen it with something that burns oil so you wouldnt be venting the exhaust to the room.
Good idea but what you might wish to do is make that copper pipe a coil and put it in the flue with the ends sticking out of the flue. You'd be scavenging any heat going up the pipe even after the flames have gone out. A small aquarium pump could be used in place of convection.
@@misamsung6191 Check out a vid called "ENDLESS Heat for Your Home WITHOUT Electricity 2.0" It works so well, and Im sure you could mod it up some more to make it even better.
@@DurpVonFronz Thanks I've seen that one. There is this British guy called Robert Murray-Smith on you tube that does lots of stuff and has done some videos on different heating methods. I've been thinking about a methylated spirits (denatured alcohol) burner for my shed workshop.
"ecoguard"...lol dunno, methanol is generally produced using natural gas of course, if you are making your own via some sort of wood gas generator or by processing harvested biogas, it's a different thing 🤔 still say wood is more eco-friendly and efficient What about a beeswax "candle?" Would that be exempt?
A few years ago Texas got hit with a massive blizzard combined with a power outage. Many people died. Whole families froze to death in their cars as they sought out what little heat they could toward the end. Elders were found dead in their homes. It's such an outrageous, senseless tragedy. I watched people putting out video after video trying to teach people who were caught in this death trap how to survive. I do believe it helped some, but not enough. I was raised in winter country and I know how to survive in the winter. Now I'm retired in Arizona and I STILL have the means to survive a blizzard at hand. I've got the knowledge, the tools, and the materials handy to get through a freak blizzard because they do happen here. Granted it's only about once every hundred years, but it happens. There's no one foolproof system. It doesn't exist. But people aren't accustomed to preparation. Kids should be taught survival skills in school so that they aren't blindsided by nature when it matters most.
We once lived in a house with a huge wood burning fireplace that had been converted to gas logs. The gas log set was also huge and roaring and all- But we live in Texas and have been known to run the air conditioner on Christmas… So for ambiance I would nestle a few small tin cans with rubbing alcohol in them and my little boy and I could watch the holiday fireplace without adding so much heat to the room that it would be too hot to enjoy.
not corgi recommended, but have installed chinese diesel heater in my wood stove. took glass out and replaced with concrete wet wall with hole to accommodate heater ......boy is it good and easier than going out in winter to get wood....and 15 litres gives me 7 days of heating.
I have this old AGA wich was converted to earthgas. I wantend to change it back to wood but have not found out how yet and that was before this crisis. Do you think I could get youre idea running on it?
What are the economics of burning alcohol fuels such as methanol in a stove? Although methanol costs less than gasoline, it has a lower energy content or heat of combustion. I can only see this working if someone has access to large volumes of methanol at low prices. Or they ferment their own alcohol using waste organic material.
@@winstonsmith935 If the wood or biomass fuel source can be sustainably produced, it would be carbon neutral and so more environmentally friendly than burning a fossil fuel on a global level. But in a densely populated urban environment it would be more hazardous to health on a local level.
@@nathanaelsmith3553 Come to Canada, we have idiots that burn thousands of acres of forests down in one year, that not only releases millions of tons of CO2, but no forests left to remove thousands of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. It takes 15 years of new growth forests to start absorbing CO2. The Amazon is being burnt down at an alarming rate and nobody cares. England cut its forests down for shipbuilding.
@@winstonsmith935 ummm.... I never said he was burning wood. Is your head made of wood? Please forgive me - I mistook you for an intelligent person with an interest in science, but you appear to be an ignorant troll. My bad. I was hoping for an intelligent conversation, not an argument, but you appear to want an argument - so now that I have insulted you by suggesting your head is made of wood, it is your turn to reciprocate by insulting me. I await your reply (I shall be rating your responses out of 5).
Thanks for the christmas fireplace stream lol. You can also use perlalite (local garden/Home Depot) or jelled IPA (it's effect is kind of like a sterno can), & it can't actually spill if it was knocked over, it tends to burn better/longer by actually igniting the fumes rather than burning the source of the alcohol itself. It keeps in a properly sealed canning jar for about 2 years until it starts to seperate.
Bad idea. You're releasing heaps of water molecules out for each alcohol molecule burned. Not to mention consuming your oxygen and other combustion byproducts and evaporated alcohols now in the atmosphere.
@@ThinkingandTinkering venting it out, pulling in outside air for combustion. Combusting outside but venting through a great exchanger placed inside...
Here in New Mexico, lots of us use wood burning stoves. We use it for our primary source of heat. I get the fuel for free cutting out the dead wood from our 20 acres of woodland. Since we have so little moisture, the dead wood takes decades to decay, so by taking out the wood, I help prevent wildfires. BUT... One thing they may not tell you about wood stoves is they are dirty! Pieces of bark fall off when you bring wood in and so you have to sweep. Then, and worse, you get ash finer than the finest flour floating in the air when you clean the stove out. We love wood heat, the ambience, the sound the stove makes as it heats up, but we don't particularly like the dust. If we had kids I'd worry about the long term health effects. Just some things to consider. The alcohol stove looks like a great idea!
When we moved into our house the previous owners has a wood burner. We used it our first winter and yep it was a blanking mess. But in talking with our insurance agent she said that we would get a better rate if we got rid of it. Now we have a gas burner that looks like a wood burner and we love it.
Our wood stove is in our concrete floor sun room, which is lower than the rest of the house and only connected to it by a door. This helps with the dust and clean up issues some, but also makes it less efficient for heating the house. The more efficient and clean burning the wood stove, the less ash it makes. People with very well designed rocket mass heaters for example, tend to experience very minimal amounts of ash. (Also not using paper as a starter really helps. Using cotton or liquid fuel helps to reduce ash).
@@justinw1765 Ours was in the basement and could heat most of the house. A friend of ours heated his house with an airtight. To move the heat around from his living room he mounted oscillating fans in holes in the wall at ceiling level. Still the living room was hotter than the surface of the sun and at the other end of his house it was colder than a politicians heart.
That's bloody expensive meths even compared to the likes of B&Q. Should be at most half that. As for how long it burns it depends what you're burning it in, bigger flame = more fuel per hour. You're going to get about 15k BTUs out of it either way.
A fuel feed system could be a small barrel and a knob to adjust fuel flow and have a drip pan for the fuel to burn in the stove and just use a gravity feed fuel system for simplicity. But if you had a diesel heater to spray methanol fuel to burn in a stove you could get a lot heat as methanol mist is burned but would need motor and pump and fuel tank and power to run the pump.
1st i absolutely love your channel. You guys like every other country's people need to stand up against these people who try and dictate and regulate what you the people can do. Meanwhile they , the want to be overloards , do whatever they please, exempting themselves from the same regulatory compliance. We in the US are in no better Shape at the moment. But there is many who have noticed what is and has been happening for much to long. And simply will no longer comply with them. Enough has finally become enough. No more comfortable slavery in place of our GOD given rights.
My partner has used wood burners as his heating for 35 plus years. He now has a stent, high cholesterol and is pre-diabetic. To look at him you would never know. He is slim, exercises everyday, doesn't smoke, drinks little alcohol and eats a healthy diet. There is plenty of evidence that inhaling pm2.5 particles will cause these conditions. That's why we have regulations. I don't think we have a GOD given right to pollute the planet.
I'm half expecting Robert to come up with a hydrogen burner one of these days.
Not hard dc current with a large surface area, ie steel wool , a tube to lead h2 through bubbler chamber (safety) , a tube to storage ( air mattress) , a tube to a tin can full of sand (radiator) , add o2 and ignite. Don't worry about storing h2 in a polymer bag(fuel) nothing to see there.
What about a rocket stove in an antique ,barrel size wood stove....could you make a metal liner inside it ( so no ash pan acceptability ) pack it with cleaned sand for a heat battery .
Air flow extend fuel channel to
the old doors vent if necessary,😳⁉️
Hydrogen=Hindenburg
Just saying....
@@johnschneider931 -- Everyone always leaves out the reality that it costs more for the electricity to release the hydrogen from water then the hydrogen is worth! This process is only viable if you can get your electricity for FREE -- or nearly so -- perhaps from what I call "surplus solar" = that solar power one can harvest *after* their battery bank is fully charged.
@@JIMPETERSON-n7i One can always run hydrogen to a catalytic converter. That is welded to a steel plate. The hydrogen will react to the metal in a cadillac converter and produce fire.
I have a set of ceramic logs that use alcohol fuel --- the logs stack up around, and conceal, a rack, where you put the cans of alcohol gel fuel, so the flames come up between the logs for a realistic looking wood fire without the mess. I saved a set of the cans from my last case of commercial fuel after finding a forumla for making my own (that is much less expensive). The commercial cans have lids I can use to snuff the flame, but love the idea of using the bean tins. The logs took the place of the grate in my wood burning fireplace, look wonderful, and I don't have to fully open the damper, sending all the heat up the chimney!
I am now inspired to buy one of those little stoves for using as heat in my garage this winter when I want to do some wood crafting, plant potting, etc. Thanks for the inspiration!
Do you care to share your formula for the cheaper fuel?
^^^ Yes please...!?
I was just going to mention all the water vapor that adds humidity into the house from burning alcohol not to mention the CO poisoning in my new doses.
Carbon monoxide poisoning is a cumulative in small doses that do not leave your body rapidly. They do damage to the red blood cells in on daily exposure accumulate to become a lot of damage.
Majority of cheap approved CO monitors work on a time, weighted average that allows you to receive small doses of CO poisoning that they consider OK until it gets to a level that exceeds a certain percentage parts per million before the alarm will go off
But if you turn off the heater that time allotted. It resets the alarm back to zero and notifies the occupant that they have been exposed to carbon monoxide.
So the next time they fired up, they get another exposure level as their body, red, hemoglobin, red blood cells, absorbs carbon monoxide, and it kills those cells that do not recover
Under no circumstances should stove, no matter how clean looking the burning is and how clean smelling because your nose cannot smell carbon monoxide
And the high water content from the oxygen, combining with the alcohol burning in the air in some localities, will put so much humidity into the building. It will cause mold to start developing in the house, depending where they live. .
Add a humidifier.
@@jobe8764 you mean dehumidifier
How much burn time did you get out of that can ? say about half full ?
Amazing thank I have an old wood burner stove and wondered what to do with it, cracking idea 💡
I copied your original idea with the two tin cans and graphine felt and place it in my little hobbit wood burner which is free standing, it works great! I use about 1inch of biofuel (ethanol)which burns for 40 minutes and gets red hot,it heats up my lounge very quickly indeed, i couldn't get on with the methanol it smells and made our eyes sting ,biofuel is the way to go,and it looks cool too ,thanks mate for all your great videos.
I was just thinking about growing something that I can make my own alcohol out of, I got some sugarcane to make neutral alcohol for making flavor extracts for icing,fillings and other things where the alcohol flavor doesn't get cooked out but I think I need something with more sugar in it than the cane I got because it really isn't that sweet, the more sugar the higher the alcohol content I think and percentage needs to be up high enough where it will burn good. HHO might be a better choice for heat though because the hydrogen burns hotter especially mixed with the oxygen. That's a cute little stove, is it enough to heat a whole room?
Does the moisture produced from this not have a detrimental impact on your stainless flue ?
Daft question…fumes from burning methanol or these fuels don’t need venting?
Sorry, question answered at the end 🤪
It is a woodburning stove so why? Doesn't make much sense.
Hey mate that's a clever move with the alcohol-burning stove - no pollution, real fire vibes, and getting warmth without a chimney. Impressive setup! 🔥
No pollution?
@PetraKann Ethanol fires achieve the same amount of heat as regular wood fires but without the smoke, soot and ash that wood produces
@@intelligenttinkering ...and from whence do you get this "ethanol" from Mr Tinker?
And at what price?
@@intelligenttinkering You need to look at the entire fuel cycle in order to determine the overall economics of use biofuels such as ethanol.
For example, Research addressing the energy needed to grow crops and convert them to biofuels concluded that producing ethanol from corn required 29% more energy than ethanol is capable of generating.
@PetraKann fair play! Everyday is a school day, and today's lesson is on ethanol. Seems you've got the fire of knowledge burning bright.
This liquid fuel is excellent for retrofitting the older box stoves into something with clean output. It is ideal for use in stone wall basements and well houses to keep temperatures above freezing, as well as other areas that need dry heat warming in the depth of winter. The liquid fuel simplicity would be ideal for a medium sized DIY drum heater.
We use ComfortBilt Pellet heaters with screened white oak pellets that are carbon neutral & negative when screened and now burning at 94% efficiency.
Also the optimized Monarch wood air furnace with input vent modification and damper output tweaking and the wood pre heated upon it will burn with the interior of the firebox white as plaster dust.! That makes the renewable aspects of these hardwoods carbon neutral or even negative, since the energy is completely retrieved from the material with only smokeless clear air in the exhaust in a manner that's far less intrusive than natural decomposition.
Unless these liquid fuel heaters are vented outside, they aren't actually that dry. One of the combustion byproducts is water vapor (and a decent amount). This is fine if your place is pretty dry in the winter (natural humidifier), but not so much if it is not. And like any burner that is not getting some intake air from outside via a chimney or what not, it will reduce the oxygen in your living space noticeably if you're burning it often and larger amounts. Thankfully, when it is burning blue, it is at least not releasing CO (or very tiny amounts). But get oxygen low enough, and it doesn't matter too much if there is CO being produced or not, because unless you're very well adapted to low oxygen environments, it can cause some definite health issues and bodily side effects.
I created a methanol heater out of my titanium hot tent stove, I lined the inside with vermiculite bricks and used the heating adaptor from my camping stove to sit where the stove pipe goes to retain heat and stop the heat from going straight up and maybe marking up my low ceilings. Thanks for that suggestion, it works great and 20l of methanol costs pennies compared to turning the boiler on.
With the solar my dual fuel bill is now
Where do you get 20l of methanol for pennies? I’m paying £40
@@NewWorldHoarder Pennies per use but that’s an exaggeration, I get it at cost from work.
Ah this video takes me back, still haven't got hold of or built a woodburner, been to busy building a pond and rebuilding rotten sills on a honda, thanks for reminding me rob, i must get the gas man over to shut off the line to the fire in the living room so i can use the stone hearth 👍
I've seen alcohol stoves and I've always wondered about carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is very dangerous since it doesn't smell of anything, and will stay in your body for days. I suppose it's a risk people take with candles, but candle flames are tiny by comparison.
When you get a primarily blue flame, very little CO will be produced. But you still have to be careful of the accumulated amounts over periods of time. If your burner burns very blue, and you only use it once in a while (say to relieve the main heating system of some stress on very cold days or the like), then it should be *relatively* ok. But you definitely don't want to be using it consistently and for longer periods at a time, even with a blue flame.
Problem is, is that common sense is not so common, and there is a percentage of people out there who are either too stubborn, not bright enough, and/or too knowledge deficient, who will misuse these or other burners.
Ideally, Rob (and any other folks) would be least venting these out through a window insert. Besides very small amounts of CO, these also produce a lot of water vapor, and will really humidify a living space. This can be good if you live in a place with very, very dry winters, but not so much if you live in places like the mid to south East Coast, western WA and OR, the deep south, etc. The places are often moderately to moderately lowish humid even in the deepest and coldest part of winter, minus the occasional very cold days because of polar vortexes etc.
Please teach subscribers how to make ethanol fuel for home heating like the application in this video.
Thanks
Seems a bit ridiculous on a number of levels, considering it's much cheaper and far easier to just go buy a bottle of meths. Distilling alcohol isn't exactly some great secret, even the Irish managed it.
Unless you are making your own bulk alcohol out of cheap biomass materials...alcohol as fuel is on the expensive side, especially so when you factor in the amount of BTU's per mass and volume. I do like how it burns fairly clean with the right conditions, which aren't hard to make/design.
Ultimately, the "best" fuel is the cheapest fuel. Wood/biomass burning has come a long way, and there are now fairly to quite efficient systems out there. I realize that it is a real PITA and expensive to set up in the UK (and some areas in the EU), but in the US, it tends to be much less so.
I have a traditional wood stove on our property. I've been thinking of ways to make it more efficient such as insulating the stove/combustion chamber better. The flue/chimney is not as long (within the inside of the house) as I would like, so a lot of heat gets wasted going up through it. I've thought of cutting holes in it and putting copper pipes through them and blowing a fan through them. We have a moderate sized hot tub only about 8 or 9 feet away from the stove, and I've though about using the water in there as a heat battery. Wrap copper tubing around the chimney and pump (probably passively) the water through it.
Also have thought about putting a large, somewhat parabola shaped IR reflector behind the stove and directing it towards the doorway that the heat needs to go through (unfortunately, the wood stove is in a "sun room" [ironically named] which is directly on the ground on concrete about 4 to 5 feet lower than the rest of the house, and that is unheated. There is a door that opens up to it from the main house, and a window in a bedroom that opens up to it. Not the most efficient place for it, especially with all the 22 or so feet of large sliding glass doors. But it was the easiest place to put it, especially since our place isn't that large, and it would have been mighty awkward and too hot if put in our living room.
(Gawd, how I wish our property didn't have so many trees, and I could build Solar heat collectors instead, with some Solar panels directly hooked up to nichrome wire in a very well insulated heat battery [for nighttime heating]).
But the cost of the alcohol ? It's typically around $5 per litre . That's six kilowatt/hours of energy content. $1.23 per kilowatt/hour . Do folk feel comfortable with that cost ?
We've got lpg gas rayburn, which is has been condemned because of a internal flue. I might try this
Use used "Chips oil" from restaurants.
Awesome Idea. I have a camping wood stove that I modified to double up as an alcohol burner. Duel fuel for more options.
Heat Recovery Ventilators are very efficient and reasonably priced. You also need ventilation to remove the moisture from the combustion air.
I installed a lot of them in well insulated, multi unit buildings, that only had a tiny electric heater, plus heat generated by lights, cooking, warm bodies...
There are bio-mas digesters that use human/animal waste and kitchen scraps, to make methane that are interesting.
Great idea 💡 👍 👏
Add an 20 cm (8") X 10 cm (4") thin ceramic plate above the flame and tilted 15° / forward (facing the front) top forward to spread the flame and create more radiated heat in the infrared spectrum, and maybe a small fan driven by a peltier device .
That said, a source of low cost peltier devices and heat syncs for those who need a little engineering help.
😏🕊
No toxic fumes from methanol, which I think is the safest and cleanest fuel out there!
Hey Rob! Excellent idea! Went down a small rabbit hole in google scholar trying to find materials that have selective emission bands in mid-infrared - idea being something you can chuck in the flame or have on a flat plate above the flame to make a radiant heater. Didn't find anything yet but carbon and ceramic seem to be good options, as you've already tested. That aside, have you considered or tried out burning iron powder yet? I remember watching a video on another channel where they were talking about a research team testing this as an energy dense heating solution for homes and industries while emitting no carbon. Might need a filter for the rust from the burning though.
Excellent idea 💡 👏
You Quit Smoking! Good for you! Smart conversion!
Can you please convert a paraffin heater into a ethanol burner?
My paraffin heater has the curly wire at the top that heats up and glows red hot.
Maybe you could stuff that chimney with the curly metal stuff to create alot more heat?
I hope video 2126 will be how to make ethanol on the cheap? 🙏😉🤣
What's the heat output of the alcohol burner please? And what's the approx cost per hour to run?
How warm is it? Many stoves claim to be 4kw output,though a bioethonol,is only 1000-2000w?alot cooler
De ce pe alcool și nu pe HIDROGEN din ELECTROLIZĂ???
Pourquoi sous alcool et pas sous HYDROGÈNE d'ÉLECTROLYSE ???Why on alcohol and not on HYDROGEN from ELECTROLYSIS???
One thing that would increase the heat output would be having a tube go thru each side that sits right over the flame. The ends of that tube have a 90 degree elbow pointing down to the ground and one pointed up. By doing this you would be heating the air and creating a simple air convection to speed up heating considerably and still get that radiant heat once the whole thing warms up. Seen it with something that burns oil so you wouldnt be venting the exhaust to the room.
Good idea but what you might wish to do is make that copper pipe a coil and put it in the flue with the ends sticking out of the flue. You'd be scavenging any heat going up the pipe even after the flames have gone out. A small aquarium pump could be used in place of convection.
@@misamsung6191
Check out a vid called "ENDLESS Heat for Your Home WITHOUT Electricity 2.0" It works so well, and Im sure you could mod it up some more to make it even better.
@@DurpVonFronz Thanks I've seen that one. There is this British guy called Robert Murray-Smith on you tube that does lots of stuff and has done some videos on different heating methods. I've been thinking about a methylated spirits (denatured alcohol) burner for my shed workshop.
An old Dutch oven or heavy cast iron pot would work inside the stove
You remind me of Anthony Hopkins in the movie RED2. 😊
I get wood for free , Alcohol cost money
"ecoguard"...lol
dunno, methanol is generally produced using natural gas
of course, if you are making your own via some sort of wood gas generator or by processing harvested biogas, it's a different thing 🤔
still say wood is more eco-friendly and efficient
What about a beeswax "candle?" Would that be exempt?
A few years ago Texas got hit with a massive blizzard combined with a power outage. Many people died. Whole families froze to death in their cars as they sought out what little heat they could toward the end. Elders were found dead in their homes.
It's such an outrageous, senseless tragedy. I watched people putting out video after video trying to teach people who were caught in this death trap how to survive. I do believe it helped some, but not enough.
I was raised in winter country and I know how to survive in the winter. Now I'm retired in Arizona and I STILL have the means to survive a blizzard at hand. I've got the knowledge, the tools, and the materials handy to get through a freak blizzard because they do happen here. Granted it's only about once every hundred years, but it happens.
There's no one foolproof system. It doesn't exist. But people aren't accustomed to preparation. Kids should be taught survival skills in school so that they aren't blindsided by nature when it matters most.
What are the prices of alcohols in your neck of the woods ?? Methanol ethanol and 100 percent isopropyl Robert. Thanks😀😀😀😀
Is an Ethanol stove a damp heat ?
We once lived in a house with a huge wood burning fireplace that had been converted to gas logs. The gas log set was also huge and roaring and all- But we live in Texas and have been known to run the air conditioner on Christmas…
So for ambiance I would nestle a few small tin cans with rubbing alcohol in them and my little boy and I could watch the holiday fireplace without adding so much heat to the room that it would be too hot to enjoy.
not corgi recommended, but have installed chinese diesel heater in my wood stove. took glass out and replaced with concrete wet wall with hole to accommodate heater ......boy is it good and easier than going out in winter to get wood....and 15 litres gives me 7 days of heating.
I have this old AGA wich was converted to earthgas. I wantend to change it back to wood but have not found out how yet and that was before this crisis. Do you think I could get youre idea running on it?
What are the economics of burning alcohol fuels such as methanol in a stove?
Although methanol costs less than gasoline, it has a lower energy content or heat of combustion.
I can only see this working if someone has access to large volumes of methanol at low prices.
Or they ferment their own alcohol using waste organic material.
Methane safest.
Burning alcohol create so much humidity that it might start to grow mold. Be really carefull not to destroy your house.
I like the clamp or cramp on the top shelf. It looks like the "road runner", beep beep ;)
Have you tried filling the can with perlite before adding the fuel.
Well , if we got a moonshine set up., we could produce our own fuel ...
Yoooo not the alcohol this is criminal what a waste of bourbon. scotch ok but not the bourbon . Alligator tears 😂
Or an old ammo box like Daniel's inventions ch.
Good citizens will freeze to stay in compliance.
Is there a video on how to make the bio fuel?
Also now put a pot of sand on top
So have you tried that with a chip oil and methanol mix?
There is an advert on the radio advising Londoners not to burn wood because it degrades air quality.
It’s why you pay carbon Taxes around the world.
He isn’t burning wood, or wasn’t the Video clear enough for you to understand what he is burning
@@winstonsmith935 If the wood or biomass fuel source can be sustainably produced, it would be carbon neutral and so more environmentally friendly than burning a fossil fuel on a global level. But in a densely populated urban environment it would be more hazardous to health on a local level.
@@nathanaelsmith3553 Come to Canada, we have idiots that burn thousands of acres of forests down in one year, that not only releases millions of tons of CO2, but no forests left to remove thousands of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. It takes 15 years of new growth forests to start absorbing CO2. The Amazon is being burnt down at an alarming rate and nobody cares. England cut its forests down for shipbuilding.
@@winstonsmith935 ummm.... I never said he was burning wood. Is your head made of wood? Please forgive me - I mistook you for an intelligent person with an interest in science, but you appear to be an ignorant troll. My bad. I was hoping for an intelligent conversation, not an argument, but you appear to want an argument - so now that I have insulted you by suggesting your head is made of wood, it is your turn to reciprocate by insulting me. I await your reply (I shall be rating your responses out of 5).
Robert, can you use methanol to run an Arga?
So no flue?
I suppose used oils are not compliant?
Is that the same methanol that goes in a race car?
2 comments????
in seconds!
Thanks for the christmas fireplace stream lol. You can also use perlalite (local garden/Home Depot) or jelled IPA (it's effect is kind of like a sterno can), & it can't actually spill if it was knocked over, it tends to burn better/longer by actually igniting the fumes rather than burning the source of the alcohol itself. It keeps in a properly sealed canning jar for about 2 years until it starts to seperate.
Vermiculite probably works even better.
If you’re putting alcohol in your stove, I’m gonna be concerned about your motivations. 😂
lololol
Bad idea. You're releasing heaps of water molecules out for each alcohol molecule burned. Not to mention consuming your oxygen and other combustion byproducts and evaporated alcohols now in the atmosphere.
go on then astound us - what is your better idea?
@@ThinkingandTinkering venting it out, pulling in outside air for combustion. Combusting outside but venting through a great exchanger placed inside...
ahh - so you don't mean an alcohol stove is a bad idea - you mean not venting it is a bad idea - i get it
Whoa!
lol
the problem is compliance
I found 2 tin cans at once gets a decent heat going. One litre lasted about 6 hours and a large sitting room was quite toasty.
Also if you pack it with firebricks around the tin can, it acts like a storage heater after the flame goes out
Here in New Mexico, lots of us use wood burning stoves. We use it for our primary source of heat. I get the fuel for free cutting out the dead wood from our 20 acres of woodland. Since we have so little moisture, the dead wood takes decades to decay, so by taking out the wood, I help prevent wildfires. BUT...
One thing they may not tell you about wood stoves is they are dirty! Pieces of bark fall off when you bring wood in and so you have to sweep. Then, and worse, you get ash finer than the finest flour floating in the air when you clean the stove out. We love wood heat, the ambience, the sound the stove makes as it heats up, but we don't particularly like the dust. If we had kids I'd worry about the long term health effects. Just some things to consider.
The alcohol stove looks like a great idea!
When we moved into our house the previous owners has a wood burner. We used it our first winter and yep it was a blanking mess. But in talking with our insurance agent she said that we would get a better rate if we got rid of it. Now we have a gas burner that looks like a wood burner and we love it.
@@misamsung6191 Interesting! I don't remember our insurance company asking us about it, although I'm sure they must have.
Our wood stove is in our concrete floor sun room, which is lower than the rest of the house and only connected to it by a door. This helps with the dust and clean up issues some, but also makes it less efficient for heating the house.
The more efficient and clean burning the wood stove, the less ash it makes. People with very well designed rocket mass heaters for example, tend to experience very minimal amounts of ash. (Also not using paper as a starter really helps. Using cotton or liquid fuel helps to reduce ash).
@@justinw1765 Ours was in the basement and could heat most of the house. A friend of ours heated his house with an airtight. To move the heat around from his living room he mounted oscillating fans in holes in the wall at ceiling level. Still the living room was hotter than the surface of the sun and at the other end of his house it was colder than a politicians heart.
Bingo Robert!
Good idea. Is Ethanol cost effective to use? Amazon is doing a litre for £20. How long would that burn for?
That's bloody expensive meths even compared to the likes of B&Q. Should be at most half that. As for how long it burns it depends what you're burning it in, bigger flame = more fuel per hour. You're going to get about 15k BTUs out of it either way.
You getting robbed mate, it's £15 for 20 liters of methanol off Lazada here in Thailand. UK is stuffed.
A fuel feed system could be a small barrel and a knob to adjust fuel flow and have a drip pan for the fuel to burn in the stove and just use a gravity feed fuel system for simplicity. But if you had a diesel heater to spray methanol fuel to burn in a stove you could get a lot heat as methanol mist is burned but would need motor and pump and fuel tank and power to run the pump.
What about the fumes ? Not harmful ?
watch the video i referenced
Screw the EU, we were supposed to have left remember. Brexit without the exit! Great video!
How mush is the fuel let’s say for five litres and how long would it last ,
Those are really the two ... smartest questions to be asked.
@@RPRosen-ki2fk I had to be right at least once in life by the sound of it it was twice not once. Do you know the answer?
@@KavanOBrien Prices in my area are about $12 to 15 a gallon. Methanol has about 60k BTU's per gallon.
I have watched many of your videos and you always impress me.
1st i absolutely love your channel. You guys like every other country's people need to stand up against these people who try and dictate and regulate what you the people can do. Meanwhile they , the want to be overloards , do whatever they please, exempting themselves from the same regulatory compliance. We in the US are in no better Shape at the moment. But there is many who have noticed what is and has been happening for much to long. And simply will no longer comply with them. Enough has finally become enough. No more comfortable slavery in place of our GOD given rights.
My partner has used wood burners as his heating for 35 plus years. He now has a stent, high cholesterol and is pre-diabetic. To look at him you would never know. He is slim, exercises everyday, doesn't smoke, drinks little alcohol and eats a healthy diet. There is plenty of evidence that inhaling pm2.5 particles will cause these conditions. That's why we have regulations.
I don't think we have a GOD given right to pollute the planet.
attach the cover plate with a hinge & add a handle for more convenience
Could you place a rounded Piece of aluminum or steel tubing have 2 vents on the sides.
And the rounded tube with the middle will retain the heat.