Originally Posted by
zoltani
Lol, boiling water is difficult with an alcohol stove....thanks for the chuckle!
Originally Posted by
robow
A couple years ago I was on a tour with a fellow who had a Jet boil and he pooh-poohed my little cat stove and so we had a race to see who could bring 2 or 3 cups of water to boil soonest and it was darn near a draw. He might have won by few seconds but it wasn't much if any difference which surprised me as well.
It's simple thermodynamics. I didn't say that you can't boil water. I said it takes
longer to boil water
and more fuel. Pure Ethanol has a bit over half the heat energy of white gas or butane (which have roughly the same energy content). Add 5% water and the heat energy drops to half. Methanol has less than half the heat energy of butane. Since the rate of oxidation for fuels is roughly the same, the amount of time it takes to put a certain amount of heat into a body of water is independent of the fuel. If the fuel has less energy in it to begin with, it takes longer to heat the water. You can say that your alcohol stoves heat at the same rate as butane fueled stoves but you are experiencing an observational bias. The
science behind burning fuel and heating water says otherwise.
Here's a question for all of you alcohol stove users: What fuel do you use at home for cooking? Do you use alcohol? If not, why not?