Heat exchangers & meths - any reason not to?

[Bearbonesnorm]

In my quest to set fire to myself at least once a day, I got thinking about those pots with heat exchangers on the bottom (think jetboil) and thought is there any half decent reason why they wouldn't work with meths? The stuff I've read is quoting boil times reduced by up to 50% when compared to a 'normal' pot on a gas stove ... so why not meths?

Anyone tried it or would anyone care to try it, before I waste some money? :?

[Taylor]

I'm quite happy for you to waste your own time during this experiment, although I would be intrested to hear your findings.

[valleydaddy]

it should work just as well in theory as the jetboil version sits above a flame and so do the others so no reason to doubt your ideas.

Just finding the right pot to use I guess or can you make a heat exchanger plate that a regular alu or ti mug/pot would sit on???

[didnothingfatal]

http://www.optimusstoves.com/seen/optim ... -cook-set/

The special heat exchanger reduces „time to boil“ by 20%, making your stove energy efficient and saving fuel when cooking.

[thomthumb]

I'd be pretty sceptical that you could mod a pot to add a heat exchanger - adding one would leave you with the task of making good thermal contact between pot and HE - difficult to do imo. alu welded to an alu pot might be your best bet if you wanted to go down this route. a sheet of copper (heavy though) would work well if you could attach it well to the bottom of the pot.

I have had thoughts about a copper based alu sided pan (like a saucepan) you wouldn't need a lot of copper to make it work.

no reason why you couldn't use meths under a pot with a HE though.

sorry for geeking out for a minute!

[Singlespeedpunk]

Google for "Thermal epoxy" and then use it to fix a copper sheet to the bottom of a Ti or Alu mug / tin. Should help things along!

SSP

[Ian]

Google for "Thermal epoxy"

You can even make your own, cool* 8-)


*edit: did you see what I did there

[Bearbonesnorm]

*Could be wrong content.

* I thought the idea of the HE was to increase the surface area of the pot base. I'm thinking that sticking something on the pot bottom won't really aid that cause. I fully understand that copper is a better heat conductor than aluminium and aluminium is a better heat conductor than ti ... so adding a copper base to an alu' pot or an alu' base to a ti pot could be a good thing but surely whatever you've stick it on with will act as an insulator to some degree and it won't actually increase the surface area.

Something like a 'ridged' pot base would be better?

[didnothingfatal]

http://cascadedesigns.com/msr/stoves/st ... er/product

Remembered this, great bit of gear

[Ian]

Yep, got one of those MSR heat exchangers somewhere in the cupboard.

The Primus ETA pans have a bit of a heat exchanger on the bottom, similar to the optimus one. I have a large one for car camping (1.7 litres) which is good. The size of their "smaller" 1.0 litre pots is still a bit on the big side for me for bikepacking. Besides which, if you needed to boil a large quantity of water I wouldn't use a meths stove to start with.