Alcohol Stoves - Add Water to Reduce Soot
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- Опубліковано 16 вер 2024
- In this video I am testing how adding water affects the production of soot when using a spirit burner. The alcohol burner is a genuine Trangia burner. The fuel that I used was the "GSK Spiritus" which is a spirit advertised to be used as e.g. a cleaning agent for the household or as a fuel for spirit burners. The only ingredient that is being listed is "ethyl alcohol". Therefore I cannot say anything about the exact denaturants that have been mixed into this alcohol.
Removing the soot is done effectively with a bit of vinegar, a scrubbing sponge and some elbow grease.
I have similar problem. After spending half a day making an elaborate capillary-based alcohol stove out of three cans (five if failures count) and boiling some water using what supposedly is laboratory-grade pure ethanol, my pot instantly became sooty... I suspect lack of oxygen to be the culprit in both my and your cases since pure carbon is a byproduct of an incomplete burn. Maybe it'll be less sooty outdoors since fresh air and all that jazz, but I'd probably experiment by gently but continuously blowing some air through a tube directly underneath the main flame when it's burning. Then compare the resulting soot buildup. If it becomes less noticeable maybe it's wise to modify your burner by adding vents to it's bottom.
I've just tried this same experiment, 99 % ethyl alcohol with 10 % water. The result was significantly less soot.
What are you able to get for alcohol in Germany? In the states the best thing to use is Denatured Alcohol and you get very little soot. I know in some countries the Denatured is tough to find. Interesting video thoug.
Over here the most common thing is Ethanol (at least 94%) that has got a denaturant (usually petroleum-ether or
methyl-ethyl-ketone) added to it. It is commonly referred to as "Spiritus" or "Brennspiritus". The latter translates to burning spirit. As far as I know this is quite similar to what is being used in North-America. Unfortunately the only ingredient that is labelled on the bottles is "ethyl-alcohol" so the specific ingredients and concentrations are not clear and probably influence the amount of soot being produced.
I thought about getting high-purity ethanol a while back but it is difficult to get ahold of usable amounts for reasonable prices... without questions being asked. After all, the regular denatured ethanol is fine for almost everything except drinking. We even use it in the lab to clean instruments and flasks for non-analytical samples because the pure stuff is too expensive. 😅
Sounds like that is pretty close to what we use. I just don’t see much of a soot problem on my pots. They brown a bit but not terribly. Anyways, love your camp gear videos!
Maybe I just need to try out a different brand next time. Thank You! :)
I am a newb..
But for outside use ( good ventilation ) the Yellow bottle HEET seems to be the best. Inside the house use, denatured alcohol seems to be good.
No soot with either. I am using the military trangia from a Swedish mess kit... I'd like a simmer ring for it. It is one hot burner.
Great for heating up food fast, but I want to simmer and make my own stew from fresh ingredients.
Saw vid where the guy showed no soot acheived by sitting stove only a couple inches beleow his pans. No soot using 70 Iso.
Skip all the scrubbing and just put aluminum foil on the bottom of the container.
Ever notice you have to scrub your butt off to remove soot but it comes off all on it's own in your backpack?
Won't there be a thin layer of air in between the two surfaces acting as an insulator though?
Yes, the backpack gets "seasoned" on the inside during that process. 😄
@@icecreamgecko One could make the foil flat against the pot like in a cake pan going into an oven.
I found your video because i was trying to figure out what trangia's instructions wanted to tell when it said add 10% or max 15% water to the fuel to redue soot. You appear to have added 30mls but to how much mls of ethanol? Like what is the final mls with water and ethanol? Also Another question, i want to brew coffee with my one, the maxium time required is 10 mins or less. What would I have to do here, like how many mls of ethanol mixed with how many mls of water?
Additional information: The pot of coffee will brew 1L
Hi, thanks for your comment. I prepared a 9:1 mixture of spirit and water which means that I had a 10 % water content in the mix. Therefore, by adding 30 ml of said mixture to the burner, I in essence added 27 ml of spirit and 3 ml of water.
In regards to the 10 minute brew time I cannot really help you. An entire litre of water is going to take quite a bit longer than the little volume that I brought to a boil. I do not even have a pot and stand for the burner to do that _safely_ . 😖
So... you decided to set the garage on fire instead of your house?
Things are just more fun with petrol and brake-cleaner around. 😊
Adding water must be distilled water otherwise minerals will accumulate in the stove....
i use 99.99% pure methanol and i never get ANY soot nor smell.
Is that 91 or 99% rubbing alcohol? Does it still give off the nasty smell while burning with the water mixture?
The only thing that is written on the label is that the bottle contains ethyl-alcohol. I assume that it is 99 % Ethanol but about the precise concentration, at the time of the experiment, I am unsure of. The smell while it is burning is certainly different from other fuels but I did not notice a particularly nasty one.
What about burning methanol and does the ratio 50/50 with water work? Please answer
I have never tried Methanol as a fuel for this. Tbh, I do not think it is worth the hassle of dealing with a more dangerous alcohol, when Ethanol is more widely available.
@@icecreamgecko Thank you for the response. Here in Syria, where the war and the lack of materials and gas are looking for cheaper alternatives, even if they are somewhat dangerous. I repeat my thanks and please provide me with any information if you get it
98 or 95 concentration methanol works best boils clean no smell and pure blue but just be caution of the toxic fumes (they are odorless)
Hi where did you purchase your stand from?
I do not remember where I bought this exact one but it must have been a seller on ebay. I have recently purchased the titanium version of the lixada stand/stove and I bought that one through aliexpress.
Soot on pan causes ur pan to heat up faster.. dont wash it off
Wouldn't it just insulate the pot from the flame and therefore make the system less fuel-efficient?
Nowhere in the directions on any Trangia packaging or on the website does it instruct people to add water to the methylated spirits or denatured alcohol... The only reason it will still ignite even at 50/50 is that the alcohol doesn't mix with the water, it simply floats on top, and once it's burned out, you've got a Trangia spirit burner half-filled with water that will now start causing a green patina to start building up on the brass. Additionally, it doesn't reduce soot in the slightest (all it does is increase your boil time, as seen in this video) - this is a ridiculous wives tale repeated by inexperienced and scientifically clueless Trangia users who don't understand how different alcohols burn. The ONLY way to prevent soot on the bottom of your pots and pans is to use pure ethanol-based fuel which costs around 3x the amount of the cheap methylated spirits you'll find in the supermarket. This kind of clean-burning fuel is typically only available at solvent retailers rather than grocery or hardware stores, and the reason for this is simple, and that's because they don't want a litre (or larger) bottle of pure ethanol to be available at the supermarket, as it encourages dangerous practices from problem drinkers, hence why they began adding methyl alcohol to what you can buy easily at the supermarket, to make it poisonous to drink...
Your statement is only partially true, it depends on the alcohol that is being used. Ethanol and Propanol DO mix fully with water. Their hydrophilic OH-group counteracts their rather short hydrophobic Alkyl-group. Alcohols with longer Alkyl-groups (Butanol and up...) will separate when they are being mixed with water. While the water in the mixture does not ignite, it will likely vaporize due to the intense heat that is being generated in the burner by the flame. Still, Ethanol is hygroscopic which makes it difficult to keep the water-content in the mix very low over longer periods of time anyway.
Over here they add substances like butanone and denatonium benzoate to ethanol as denaturants. The latter is also used in various other items to make them a bit less likely to be chewed upon and eventually swallowed by children (www.polygon.com/2017/3/1/14784140/nintendo-switch-cartridges-taste-awful-psa).
Methyl alcohol does make drinking alcohol even more poisonous than it is already but it is usually not used as a denaturant (quite the opposite) but as as a cheap additive for the drinking-ethanol. There are countless cases of hotel bars etc. serving e.g. adulterated wine to people who suffered grave medical consequences or even died because of it.
Wrong It says on the yellow bag with the trangia spirit burner. "to avoid sooting, dilute the fuel with 10 or max 15% water"
This comment is wrong on so many levels. Do you own a trangia? Read the packaging
Also the advice to buy pure ethanol (and pay alcohol duty) for fuel is ridiculous.
Thanks for the heads-up in that regard. I just checked the yellow bag and mine gives the advice in regards to the dilution as well, in most of the languages. However, in the german section this is not even mentioned. 😅