Originally Posted By: MostlyHarmless
Originally Posted By: Hikin_Jim
There are stoves that can burn diesel, but be aware that diesel is a comparatively dirty fuel. If you're going to burn diesel in most camp stoves, you're going to need to clean the stove far more frequently than you otherwise would.


I have run my optimus 00 paraffin stove on diesel. It was rather dirty and messy, didn't burn very clean and required frequent use of the cleaning needle. Which is quick and easy on the optimus 00. I wouldn't want to do it inside a tent or shelter - too smelly and messy.

The Norwegian Army (and probably other NATO nations as well) has been running the Optimus 111 on something called F-34 for years and years. F-34 is standard NATO fuel for a multitude of vehicles, aircrafts and stoves. According to Wikipedia, it is a mixture of 97% kerosene (paraffin) and 3% diesel.

I think any stove capable of burning kerosene (paraffin) should be able to burn diesel as well - but it is a messy high maintenance project.
In the US, F-34 is commonly called JP-8. JP-8 isn't quite as good of a stove fuel as K1 kerosene (called paraffin in the UK), but it's pretty darned close. You'd have to be pretty observant to notice any difference.

JP-8 is the primary fuel for vehicles in the US Army and I believe in all of the other US armed services. As such, stoves used by the US Army have to be able to use JP-8. Some of the stoves the US Army has been using recently include the MSR Whisperlite Internationale, the MSR Dragonfly, and the Optimus Nova; there may be others. There was a move to jointly develop a capillary force vaporizer (CFV) stove with MSR, but apparently that project died. They got as far as the prototype phase and issued the stove to various field units. I wish I knew why they cancelled the project. I was very curious about it. I did pick up a copy of one of the prototypes of the stove.







HJ
_________________________
Adventures In Stoving