alcohol stove fuel (Trangia)

[Sweetfancymoses]

Isopropanol is not Yellow HEET it is red Iso-HEET, which does not normally work well in alcohol stoves. Yellow HEET is almost pure Methanol.

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.

 

[yknpdlr]

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.

 

[Canotrouge]

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!!

 

[wgiles]

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.

 

[yknpdlr]

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.