Magic Mushroom and Metho

[Earthling]

I know what your thinking...its for cooking with, not for eating/drinking.... ....

Ive bought a Magic Mushroom from MiniBullDesigns and so far Im getting some interesting results for fuel consumption compared to Butane/propane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mnyPQQ0O_g

http://www.minibulldesign.com/apps/webs ... ow/1931929

What I need assistance with is what fuel do people use for their alcohol stoves here in Oz?
Ive tried some normal hardware store Metho and too much red flame is happening with the consequential black soot.
Thoughts?

[Bush Walker]

Many people add 10% water to metho ( methylated spirits) to stop the black soot.

[Franco]

Yes.
The idea has been rubbished by some , but it works...
here is an example.

Those are two White Box stoves. The one on the left has 10/15% water added to the metho (I played adding from 5 to 40% or so , 10-15 was best)
My initial reason was to get a narrower flame , a side effect was a cleaner burn.
I don't do that with the Caldera Cone because it works well as it is.
Franco

[Earthling]

So simple yet so effective. I like it, thanks guys.
Will try it today and see how she goes.

[Tony]

Hi Earthling,

The Australian Methylated Spirits is one of the best quality alcohol fuels available anywhere in the world, it contains 95% ethanol, the rest being mainly water with some Methanol and other additives to make it undrinkable.

If you want to know more about alcohol fuels and alcohol water mixtures but you have to join or pay BPL to read them.

The reason Tinny gets a nice blue flame on the Mushroom is that he uses Methanol which burns with a blue flame, but Methanol is not as efficient as our metho which burns with a more yellow flame, personally I would not bother but as Franco suggested adding a small amount of water to Metho will not harm the efficiency and will make the flame look more blue, adding water will also slow down the boil times, please note that slow boil times does not mean less efficiency or more fuel used. (fast boil time equals a more efficient stove is a myth that some stove manufactures push to try and sell more stoves).

Tony

[Franco]

good point Tony.
It still worked for me up to about 30% water added, just took longer.
Probably very counterproductive in cold temps but could be used for simmering or maybe baking particularly with low output stoves like the Tealight or a Trangia with the simmer cup on.
(I just boil...)

"fast boil time equals a more efficient stove is a myth that some stove manufactures push to try and sell more stoves"
maybe the converse is true. The faster stoves I tried, including some from MB, were less efficient (used more fuel to get the same 500ml std boil) than many slow stoves.
My opinion is that a lot of the heat from fast stoves is lost up the sides of our typically too narrow pots.


Franco

[Tony]

Hi Franco,

It still worked for me up to about 30% water added, just took longer.

I tried alcohol water mixes up to 50/50 and I found that any more than 15% water slowed the heating down too much to make it not practicable in the bush.

My opinion is that a lot of the heat from fast stoves is lost up the sides of our typically too narrow pots.

Some articles on pot size vs stove size and more will be published on BPL soon.

Tony