Alchohol burners

[Ex-member EagleOwl]

After it taking almost 21 minutes for my tatonka alchohol stove to boil 600 ml of water i can only assume that methylated spirit is the wrong fuel.

Is this the wrong fuel? Should it be methanol?

 

[beenn]

I have used methylated spirit and methanol and they both work great
Cant think what the problem would be

 

[bilmo-p5]

Did you use a windshield?

 

[Andy BB]

I'd second-guess a windshield as well. A Swedish Army Trangia set-up would boil a litre in about 10 minutes with its alcohol burner on meths. (just enough time to set up camp!)

 

[chris_r]

I made one this week and tested it when I was done. Took about 6 minutes to boil 450ml indoors. I used meths.


DSCN0504__72ppi by gibbermonkey, on Flickr

 

[Neanderthal]

Takes me 5-6 minutes to boil 500ml with meths in still air.

Stu

 

[Ex-member EagleOwl]

Was tried in garage so no wind. Will try again now.

 

[Shewie]

Methanol burns hotter than meths so is slightly quicker but even so, anything over 10 mins is pretty poor.

Is the Tatonka in clean condition, are all the jets firing ? I've not used mine for a couple of years now but it was never anywhere near those kind of times.

Try again with a lid on the pan and a wind shield (even in still conditions will speed it up)

 

[Ex-member EagleOwl]

Methanol burns hotter than meths so is slightly quicker but even so, anything over 10 mins is pretty poor.

Is the Tatonka in clean condition, are all the jets firing ? I've not used mine for a couple of years now but it was never anywhere near those kind of times.

Try again with a lid on the pan and a wind shield (even in still conditions will speed it up)

Rinsed it out this time and dried it. Was in blue flame in all the holes.

Used 50ml of Bartoline methylated spirits. Measured 600 ml and put in small Highlander stainless steal billy can with a brass base. Lit meths then immediately placed billy on stand with lid on. This time it wasn't boiling at 21 minutes.

Only thing i can think of is a bad batch of meths. I've used the stove a lot before and it's never taken this long.

The meths i'm using is not as dark a red as stuff i've used previously, could it be watered down?

Will try again with different meths to see if it is the fuel.

 

[Nohoval_Turrets]

The colour may not mean anything - it's just added to make it less appetizing. Pure alcohols are colourless, odourless and tasteless. Different manufacturers add different colours. Is the meths new? What sort of pot support are you using?

 

[mountainm]

I have the tatonka burner too - takes about 5 minutes in the bottom of my volcano stove to do 700ml to a rolling boil.

 

[Ogri the trog]

A couple of blind observations - a photo might help a lot

Sometimes you have to allow the stove to "bloom" before putting a pot on top of it - the water in the pot is acting as a "cold sink" conducting away lots of heat generated which might not be allowing the fuel and the stove to reach optimum efficiency - before it runs out of / or gets low on fuel. This can also be attributable to lighting the stove on a cold floor or during the winter!

Sometimes meths is watered down to reduce the amount of soot build up on the bottom of cooking pots - if this is an old batch and has been watered down once or twice (some of us can't remember whether we did it or not - so add another glug of water for good measure!).

Also check that the diameter of the pot is sufficiently large to allow the flames to actually heat the pot and not just lick up around the sides.

HTH

Ogri the trog