[Stoves] Very small stoves and reheating food

[Ray Menke]

Paul,
I have a smaller home made version of Dr. Reed's Woodgas Campstove XL
that uses a dog food can as the burn pot.  If I load it with dry
slices of biomass, and ignite some slices of cardboard and charcoal
dust soaked in alcohol on top of the biomass, it will just bring four
cups of water to a boil if there is no wind.  (Pot shield required.)
Often I will have to add some additional wood to get enough heat to
finish the job. Unfortunately, the dog food can has a very short life,
and adding fuel means you have to sit and watch it.  The stainless
steel burn pot in my official Woodgas Campstove XL burnt out, and I
replaced it with some heavier plain steel with the same hole patterns
but because of the thermal mass, it does not start up or perform as
well as the original.   I also built a scaled down version of a
Peko-Pe using stainless steel, but without forced air, it is a smoke
maker probably because I attempted to scale it down..  The dimensions
given for your Champion, and the dimensions of the XL's pot are just
right!  (As is the full sized Peko-Pe.)
We are a household of two, with a nut that wants to cook out on the
patio with junk biomass and cardboard slices.  Our microwave is rated
at 950 watts and takes six minutes to heat those four cups of water.
That is one-tenth of a KWH.  Therefore, it costs less than two cents
for the electricity to heat that water.  I'm guessing that is about
what the alcohol costs to start up my TLUD stove.
However, we have all electric hot water heaters switched off most of
the year, so I fire up one of my two Anderson Champion TLUD stoves and
heat four gallons of water for dish washing, and then a two quart pot
goes on the stove to boil water for coffee.  Half of the water is for
the coffee, and the other half goes into some Stanley thermos bottles
(that are wrapped up in wool cloth for additional insulation) for use
later.  I typically load my stove with one inch hardwood cubes, then
some torrefied wood/dry charcoal then cardboard and cereal box slices
dusted with charcoal fines and sprinkled with some alcohol.  Once that
burns down to a solid bed of glowing charcoal I can either add more
wood cubes or half-baked charcoal to extend the cooking time.  For
simmering I add charcoal lumps; for frying I will add some wood, etc.
I have insulated the riser portion of your stove with ceramic wool
high temperature insulation wrapped in aluminum foil, and even with
the char bed some distance below the pot, it still throws lots of
heat.
My attempts to reduce the size of the stove have not met with success.
 Variations in the quality and quantity of fuel in the standard sized
stove work better for me.  I highly recommend the use of the Stanley
Vacuum Bottle to store hot water, especially when kept in a "hay box"
or wrapped in wool cloth.
 One last hint:  Charcoal fines with alcohol (or chicken fat, or
slivers of candle wax) will help develop that glowing char on TOP of
the fuel that helps consume smoke created as the fuel burns from the
top downward.

Ray (the guy who sits and cuts cardboard and cereal boxes into 1" long
by 1/4" wide strips.)



On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 at 11:35 AM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> Hi to all,
>
> Gus has made an important observation that I simply left out.   That is:
>
> There are various stoves that can do the very small cooking.   Alcohol
> stoves are one type.  But many people (except the extremely poor) also have
> several different stoves.   And they use different fuels for different
> tasks.
>
> One aspect about the very small stoves is that they must be fast to ignite
> and provide heat.   The more advanced fuels (electricity - including
> micro-wave cooking, keorsene, LPG, alcohol, etc.) have been around for a
> while.
>
> I guess my thinking is swayed because of realizing how TLUD stoves (among
> all of the dry biomass stoves) can be in the category with those that use
> more advanced fuels.     And this can be especially true if the dry biomass
> is pellets, which represents a more advanced form of dry biomass fuel.
>
> In the end, it all boils down to what the stove users want and can afford
> and have available.   I know that my wife prefers the micro-wave.
>
> Paul


-- 
Ray  Menke