We make an alcohol burner at home. Homemade burner alcohol lamp from beer cans Alcohol lamp at home
An integral part of a hiking trip, winter fishing or hunting is the preparation or heating of food. For many objective reasons, sometimes it is not possible to make a fire. In this case, gas burners have proven themselves well, but, with all the advantages, they have disadvantages: throughout the trip, you need to carry a burner weighing about a kilogram, and at least two cylinders, the weight of which is an average of 250 grams. If the trip is long, more cylinders will be needed. In addition, such travel devices are not cheap. A camping alcohol burner is well suited to replace a gas one: it weighs very little, the amount of alcohol necessary for its operation can even be transported on an airplane, and you can make it yourself. In addition, a homemade alcohol burner is always useful in everyday life.
The principle of operation of an alcohol burner is to burn the vapors of the fuel mixture.
An alcohol burner from a can is made as follows:
- You will need two cans of canned food, coffee, etc., a piece of glass wool and fuel. Tin cans should be well washed and dried. Then they need to be cut in half, put a piece of glass wool on the bottom of one of them. It is necessary to make a plug so that the cotton wool does not crumble, place on top of it.
- Holes are made in the bottom of the second can, put on top of the first. They should fit snugly against each other, there should be no gaps around the edges.
- In the circle of the upper jar with an awl, you need to make holes with a diameter of 2 mm with a distance of 8 mm between them and 1.5 cm from the edge of the jar. It is better to make holes in such a shape that the metal is slightly bent upwards. You should get from 16 to 26 such holes.
- With the help of a syringe and a tube put on its nose, alcohol is poured inside so that the glass wool or other material is saturated with it (you can put an ordinary pumice stone).
- Ignition is carried out as follows: an alcohol burner with its own hands heats up from below, where the fuel is located, so that it begins to evaporate. After that, a lighter is brought to the holes from above, alcohol vapors begin to burn.
At least 96% alcohol must be used as fuel, it can be replaced with salicylic acid, streptocide. As practice shows, the intensity and duration of the burning of the spirit lamp depends on the type of fuel. The most intense combustion shows fuel from alcohol, and streptocide and salicylic acid are less intense, but at the same time they have a longer burning time than alcohol. Do not use gasoline as fuel due to the risk of its explosion. Kerosene is also not suitable due to the lack of a wick. As a material for alcohol impregnation, it is better to use materials made from natural fibers.
Alcohol burner from beer cans
Numerous videos contain detailed instructions how to do alcohol burner from aluminum cans from under beer or sparkling water.
Alcohol burner from a beer can To make an alcohol burner from beer cans, you need to do the following:
- Take two aluminum cans, mark the cut line with a marker and a wooden block (about 3-4 cm from the bottom), cut it.
- Insert one cut piece tightly into the other.
- Make a hole in the center of the top jar with an awl for filling. Close the filler hole with a bolt. You can use a coin instead. This item is even better: when overheated and under high pressure, it will simply jump up, releasing too much so that the can does not explode.
- Around the entire circle of the jar, a number of approximately 16 pieces are pierced with holes with an equal distance between them.
- Alcohol with a volume of 25-50 ml is poured into the filler hole, the hole is closed. You can put cotton wool on the bottom, as described in the case of tin cans.
- The spirit lamp is placed on a metal base (you can use metal cover), onto which a certain amount of alcohol is poured, is set on fire.
- After 20-40 seconds, the burner will warm up, flames will begin to come out of the holes.
Homemade alcohol burner: features
There are two types of do-it-yourself alcohol burner: open and closed. The manufacturing methods of the second type have been described above. An open one differs from a closed one in that it does not have a top cover, and the fuel is ignited without preheating. Minus an open spirit stove: high fuel consumption. Disadvantage of a closed burner: slow heating, side flames can be blown away by the wind, care must be taken when handling to avoid tipping over.
For intended use, you will need to make a stand for dishes. This is easily done with ordinary wire. A stand for the boiler and other utensils is necessary in winter time years, when cold dishes are able to extinguish the burner. If the burner without a stand is made of aluminum, it will only heat aluminum cookware effectively.
So my brains got to the point of still putting together a working device for burning alcohol and heating / cooking food. Before that, there were several attempts, but they were all crooked, like my hands. And today, after reading a couple of full articles about the subject and choosing the simplest and most effective spirit lamp, I ran to the store. I bought a couple of cans of beer, not ordinary cans, but 0.75 liters with thick side walls and began to sculpt. 
First of all, the jars were emptied into my mouth. Then I amputated their lower parts. It turned out such two details, one higher, the other lower. The one that is lower will serve as the lower part of the spirit stove, and the one that is higher, respectively, will serve as the top. 
I processed them with sandpaper so that when burning the spirit lamp did not stink of paint, which would probably burn. 
I made the edges of the bottom piece ribbed so that it fits into the top piece more easily. I did it with regular pliers. 
And I just inserted the lower (small) part into the upper (which is larger). I pressed it down with my fingers and smoothed it out with a thick book. By the way, I tried to put cotton pads inside the burner - this is bullshit. Because of the cotton wool, the alcohol does not boil as it should and does not evaporate evenly. A burner with cotton wool inside, as it were, "breathes". The flame is more, then less. Extremely unstable. I then removed all the cotton pads and now the burner is empty. 
And this is what it looked like after assembly. 
The next step was to pierce holes for the fumes of alcohol. To do this, I used an ordinary self-tapping screw, it is very sharp and easily pierced the aluminum wall of the spirit stove. Holes about half a millimeter in diameter were located 3 mm from the top edge. From hole to hole, I made a distance of about 8mm. Then I added more holes smaller size between the big ones. You can see it in the photo below. 
And a few small holes on top for filling with alcohol. Alcohol enters through these holes. When igniting, I close these holes with a coin. 
Such a contraption turned out in the end) 
This type of burner requires warm-up before ignition. To do this, I cut out a tray from ordinary foil in which I will put the burner. During ignition, it will be necessary to drop 2-3 ml of alcohol into this pan and set it on fire so that the flame warms up the spirit lamp and the alcohol in it begins to boil. In the future, I plan to make the pallet stronger. For example, from a can of sprats. 
Without hesitation, I decided to immediately test the most complicated device I had learned :) Installed on cutting board pallet, put a spirit lamp in it, and poured exactly 1 liter into an empty kettle cold water.
Everything is ready for testing! I measure 30 ml of alcohol with a syringe, pour it into a glass so that everything is as in field conditions, imagine that I don’t have a syringe and I measure by eye :). But for the purity of the first experiment, I do everything clearly. I pour alcohol into the spirit lamp directly from the glass 
From the syringe I pour 3 ml of alcohol into the tray to warm up 
I throw a coin on the filling holes and set fire to the alcohol in the pan. The flame is almost invisible, it is transparent blue. But it heats up well! 
I put a kettle on the spirit stove with a liter of water inside and note the time! 
A minute later, the spirit stove warmed up and flames appeared from the holes. After another 30 seconds, the alcohol in the pan burned out and the spirit stove looked like an ordinary gas burner. It burns evenly, without extremes. Slightly smells of burnt alcohol. The kettle boiled 12 minutes after lighting. The spirit stove itself, filled with 30 ml of alcohol, burned out for a total of 13 minutes. It just happened per liter of water) 
I will try to insert here a video of the operation of this unit. You can see even burning, at the end the kettle boils and whistles slightly.
Master - it's interesting! :)
Bottom line: having spent a little time and alcohol, I made a beautiful useful little thing that will help me drink tea and cook soup on rare trips. The price of this alcohol lamp is zero. But the effectiveness for me was a pleasant surprise! In order to boil 1 liter of cold water, 32 ml of alcohol is enough and 12 minutes at room temperature. Here. Thank you!))
Alcohol burners are often found in equipment stores. A home-made alcohol burner will be no worse, and most importantly, everyone can find the material for its manufacture. There is also it (material) in any landfill. Such a burner can be made from pasture material in the field and use where burning a fire is not desirable, for example, in a shelter or in order not to attract undue attention. After all, the fire can be seen for several kilometers. On such a homemade burner, you can easily boil yourself water for tea or a homeless package (instant noodles).
Burners can, in principle, be made from any cans of stew, coffee, condensed milk, etc. We will consider the option of manufacturing from cans of carbonated drinks (beer) that are very common in any landfill :). Cut a hole in the bottom of the jar as shown below.
It turns out something like this.
Drill holes as shown in the picture. In order for the holes to be located symmetrically, we use a lined stencil. In the field, of course, you can do without a stencil and pierce holes, for example, with a small nail or whatever comes to hand. It is advisable to make the holes small.
Cutting banks. One at 30mm and the other at 20mm.
The result was the following details of the future burner.
From one of the remaining cans we cut out such a blank as in the figure below. We make holes in this blank.
After trimming the workpiece, the next part of the burner is obtained.
Next, we insert the last part obtained into the previously prepared part. We look at the picture, everything is basically clear there.
We put the remaining part on the resulting design and get ready product. Before this, it is desirable to lubricate the part from the inside of blue color some sort of adhesive sealant.
It is best to fill the burner with alcohol. In extreme field conditions can be filled with other flammable liquids. The burner filled with alcohol must, before ignition, be slightly warmed up so that the alcohol begins to evaporate, because in our burner it is not alcohol that burns, but alcohol vapor. Further, the vapors will already appear themselves as a result of heating the burner during its combustion.
Alcohol burners are useful for lovers of fishing, hunting, hiking. In one of the previous materials, we talked about using a vessel from an asterisk. Today we will look at a way to create a more voluminous burner using an aluminum jar. Many may wonder why to make an alcohol burner if dry fuel is sold in stores. Dry fuel can also be used to make coffee or hot tea on a camping trip, but practice shows that an alcohol burner does this much better and more efficiently.
Let's watch a video of an alcohol burner from a homemade author:
What do we need to make a homemade alcohol burner?
- Aluminum can of soda, beer or other drinks;
- Round nose pliers;
- Four matchbox;
- Stationery knife;
- Medical alcohol;
- Felt pen or marker
- And scissors.
First of all, we need to cut off the top of the jar. To do this, we need to make a cut with a clerical knife and tear off the unnecessary part with round-nose pliers.
Next, we put two matchboxes, on them stationery knife blade to the jar and cut off the bottom.
The same procedure will be done with the top of our aluminum jar, but this time with four boxes.
We apply two matchboxes to the cut off upper part, but this time we don’t cut it, but circle it with a felt-tip pen or marker.
On the resulting line, we put marks or dots every centimeter and make cuts with scissors so that they start from the line to the very bottom of the piece of the can.
Our alcohol burner is almost ready, and we just have to assemble its component parts into one. To do this, slightly fold the lower part of the upper piece of the jar so that it easily enters the second.
It remains only to pour medical alcohol into our burner and test it.
Attention!!! Medical alcohol, like the burner itself, is flammable. When using it, be sure to follow the rules for handling fire and safety rules. Keep the burner away from flammable materials and mixtures. Do not add too much alcohol as this could cause the burner to explode and cause serious injury.
The burner is working, which means that the next homemade product is made in a successful way. In this way, we can boil about 250 ml of water in just 2 minutes using about 15 ml of alcohol.
IN European countries, have been using such an alcohol lamp for a long time, replacing it with a conventional burner. We can find and take note of the many advantages of this device. For example, in a mode of transport such as, say, an airplane, you can easily carry alcohol. A container for alcohol weighs much less than a gas cylinder, etc. And about the significance of such an alcohol winter fishing don't have to talk at all. Therefore, we propose to make such an alcohol lamp with your own hands, it will be very useful in everyday life.
Buying an alcohol lamp is also a trifling matter. But, if you take all the advantages and characteristics, it will be better to make it yourself at home. In order to make an alcohol lamp, a container of cans. Such cans can be, for example, cans of canned food or beer. In order to make a spirit lamp, you only need a couple of cans from a drink. The design itself is not at all complicated. And it's pretty quick and easy to make.
So, let's start simple. It is necessary to free the first jar from its contents, rinse and dry thoroughly, and then cut off its bottom. You can immediately release the second jar, but you can do it later. Here it is not so important. Next, we will need a board of a certain thickness in order to cut the jars. It is best if the height desired board will be twenty-five millimeters.
The next move is this: we take a jar, put it on the table, and then firmly press it to the blade and twist it. It will be enough to make no more than fifteen turns. After that, the bottom is easy to separate from the top of the jar. The cut off part will serve as the bottom of the future burner. We will continue to insert the top into this part. Based on this, we insert our second jar from above (still whole). To easily enter the upper part, it needs to be slightly stretched. We insert it very carefully so that in the future you can easily disassemble our design. Sufficient depth of about seven millimeters.
Having done all these steps, we begin to make the future upper part. If you didn't release earlier, release the contents of the second jar now. After emptying, we drill holes around the entire perimeter. For greater effect, use a thinner drill.
After the done manipulations, proceed to the next. Remove the entire middle of the bottom and cut off the entire top of the jar. This is how the design should look like.
From the remaining parts of the jars we make inside. We will need to cut the strip. To do this, we need a special formula for us. The length we need should correspond to the height of half of the jar plus the height of the narrow part of the second half of the jar. Simply put, our resulting length should be much larger than the width of the board we are using.
In the lower part we make several cutouts in the form of triangles, the height of which should be approximately three millimeters. These cutouts are necessary so that our fuel flows into the inside of the burner.
To complete the work on our equipment, we need several actions. To make the folding process even easier, we use the remnants of the jar. From them we cut out a small mount. And on the top of the jar we make a small cut, about six millimeters.
Our alcohol stove turned out. The alcohol itself is poured into the very larger hole up. To boil 500 milliliters of water, we need only twenty-five grams of alcohol. Further, through the same larger hole we set fire to alcohol. The combustion process begins, after a couple of minutes the alcohol begins to boil and the vapor of alcohol seeps through small holes and it is ignited from the central flame.
Our alcohol burner is working.
