Kerosene Wick Stoves

[greentwin]

Here is an example of a simple heat exchanger tube on a wood stove.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h6XMZb2el6E

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[greentwin]

Here is an old kerosene linear wick stove, and you can see that while they work, they burn with a yellow flame, and not the blue flame you get when you add the sheet metal superheater jacket around the wicks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3mb25AOdgM

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[greentwin]

This looks like a pretty high performance burner, but not as easy to light as a wick stove, and not nearly as simple as a wick stove.
I don't consider this type of stove as safe as a wick stove either.
I think this style burner would come closer to being able to heat an entire room of the house via a heat exchanger and radiator, with this burner being mounted outdoors.

Its quite an impressive burner assuming it did not coke up quickly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDqrCJ9QKxo
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[greentwin]

I looked at orchard heaters, but I consider them dangerous.
I have seen one working, and they do work well, but you would not want to accidentally tip one over while it was running.
I think it would be too risky to operate one of these near the house.

I believe he used kerosene with too low of a flashpoint in this orchard heater, and the fuel boiled over.
The water just makes the flame much larger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzA12DVcjEE

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[greentwin]

So I have a number of cooking options should be happen to get the North Carolina treatment, and be without power for a long time.
I am also looking at keeping things like salted ham, which does not need refrigeration.
And we bought some food in glass jars the other day, as well as a few bags of rice, which I sealed in 5 gallon containers.
Better to be prepared, especially in this day and age.

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[greentwin]

I inherited the equipment in my dad's shop, and one of the items was a nifty roll of white material with a red stripe.
I could not find a use for it, but did not want to throw it away, in case it was some sort of high-temperature insulation, or something else useful.
So it has been on my shelf since 2006.

I was looking at kerosene lanterns, and would really like to purchase one, but they are not cheap, and I can't really justify buying the one I want.
One one website was a roll of wick, and so I finally figured out what I had on my shelf.
I recall that my dad used a kerosene lantern on his boat, and thus the need for spare wick material.

You can see two kerosene lanterns in these photos of the 50 foot houseboat that my dad scratch built.
Powered by Detroit Diesel 671. Extremely reliable engine.
Dad was very old-school, so no generator for his boat.
He used propane cooking, hot water tank heated from motor coolant, and 12VDC where he needed to power a pump or something.
Ice box that used block ice originally, and later sack ice when block ice became difficult to find.

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[cae2100]

Very nice boat, and as for the kerosene stoves and such, we have one here and they're quite strong smelling when being used, so I think that anything you cook over it would end up in the foods too. For cooking, I much more prefer propane or even alcohol since they burn with no fumes/smell to get trapped in the food.

As I said before, Im a big fan of alcohol burners, but not those brass cheap things you showed on the other page, I like actual burners that looks like a lantern. They do make some that were pumped up like the old coleman gasonline stoves to build up pressure, then as the heat permeates into the wicked area, it turns the liquid to a gas, which keeps the pressure going and also burns the gas rather than the liquid, so they're alot more effecient. Ive seen alot of old military stoves that were built that way and they would burn for hours on just a tiny little bit of alcohol, and would easily give enough heat to cook a whole platoon's worth of food. They would have many different jets in them, so when it was running, it acted like the propane burner you showed with a larger spread out flame, which would heat a pan or pot very quickly and quite evenly.

As for the actual burners, alcohol burners put out an insane amount of heat, even a simple one with just a wick, and they can easily boil water, or in my case, I use it to heat the glue pot for my hide glue, that way I can use it when the power goes out, or even more commonly, use it for heating my wax working tools since the heat is very controllable and easy to use.

[greentwin]

I can't smell anything anyway, so odor is not a problem, and that saves a lot of showering, soap, and water too (saving the planet, one missed shower at a time, as I tell my wife).

So I like the wick idea, and I think it is the least likely design to go into a runaway situation.
Easy to light, easy to turn off.
I don't really like the bowl of fuel thing, since it is not a fuel-tight joint; the top is just a light press fit into the bowl.
I would prefer something more akin to a lantern design, which has a tank with a fill cap, and you could actually tip it over or perhaps drop it, without a major fuel spill.

As a wick burner is turned up, eventually the flame becomes yellow, and so there is a limit to how much the hot face around the wicks can superheat the burning fuel.
Very similar to a foundry furnace, where there is a limit to the amount of fuel that a give hot face surface area can vaporize and fully combust.

As I mentioned, the diesel boat stoves/ovens have a DC fan, and that seems to turbocharge the burner output, I guess like a furnace, it adds extra combustion air to the process.

So one idea that comes to mind is adding a stack somehow to a wick burner, to draw a draft, and thus act as a non-powered fan of sorts.
Then you would have to capture the heat from the stack.
I am going to go study the diesel boat stoves/ovens again.

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[greentwin]

The incandescent gas lamp mantles produce very impressive amounts of light, but as I read up on the mantle material, apparently a major component of the mantle was/is thorium dioxide, which is radioactive.
We always used those in scouting outdoors, so probably not a big issue, but probably not a good idea to use one indoors, especially during the initial burn-off process where the mantle material is converted to a brittle ceramic oxide shell.

So for indoor use, I guess I will stay away from the mantle-type lanterns.

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[greentwin]

For backup lighting, there is a smaller Dietz #1, 8 candlepower, 12" tall, 45 hour burn time, 36 oz tank, and a larger Dietz #2500, 15" tall, 12 candlepower, 75 hour burn time, 84 oz tank.
They also make dual lantern/cookstove lanterns, but what I really need out of a lantern is as much light as I can get, and a long burn time.

I bought a #2500.
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