Fun With Pop Can Alcohol Stoves

This is by no means a new concept, and by no means am I on to something here. The idea of an alcohol burning stove made out of pop cans (pop, soda, however you want to say it) has been around for probably as long as the aluminum can itself. However, it is a lot of fun once you get one of these running!

I am building my stoves for backpacking. The object of the game is to make as light weight of a cooking setup as possible, but still retain the function of efficiently cooking food and eating it. You can't get much lighter than pop cans!

Here is the setup I just made:



The stove (left, front) is made from pop cans. It is a Pressure Jet design in that the fuel needs to be pre-heated by dribbling some around the outside, lit on fire, causing the fuel inside to boil which forces vapor out the jets, and then the jets are ignited from the pre-heat cycle flame.

To make the stove I cut the bottom sections off about 1.25" high. Then I drilled 8x1/16" holes for the jets around the inside of the top ring. Then I drilled a 5/32" hole for a screw in the center. This is the fuel port. The screw is just force-threaded in, the aluminum is thin and soft enough. The hole needs to be closed up so the flames come out the jets, not the center (I think it also has something to do with the flame being lower and causing the stove to blow - I havent played with it, I know this is how it is supposed to be).

The stand is made from old Cushcraft 2m beam antenna elements - 1/4" aluminum. I cut them 10" long and bent them 3.25" in from the ends to make the stand about 3" high. The side that is joined has 14g solid copper (romex ground) wire wrapped around it and then soldered. This allows the stand to fold.

The aluminum foil on the bottom acts as a heat reflector and a primer pan. The other piece is a wind screen (it forces the heat up and around the whole pot, not just the bottom). The pot is a small coffee can.

Here is the stove running:



Here it is running with the pot on and the windscreen around it:



I ran the stove on Denatured Alcohol - the stuff you get in the metal can at a hardware store. It burned for 20 minutes on 1 ounce of fuel. I am not sure how much water I had, I just filled up the pot high enough to cover the height of a Ramen Noodle brick (way more than I really needed, but I didn't want to break up the noodles in to mush). I put the noodles in after about 18 minutes and left the noodles in the hot water after the stove went out just to cook a bit longer.

Water boiling:



Cooking:



It is pretty cool to make something yourself and put it to use! I know this isn't an amazing concept, but I sure had fun with it.

This stove is a working deign. I will probably use it in the future. However, what I really want to do is make one of these adjustable so it isn't a light-and-go stove. The one I made here is just a single speed. For boiling water it is OK, but not for keeping hot chocolate or soup warm.

This is also the last post for 2008!