Just an update on ethanol availability in Canada. It appears that Canadian Tire is offering a new product called Bio-flame. It is denatured ethanol but a pretty potent blend of 95% ethanol / 5% 2-propanol. I can't wait to try some and compare to methyl hydrate. Only problem is that currently sell the 3.78litre size and not the 1litre size locally. And its not cheap - $25 for a jug which is more than 2.5x the price of methyl hydrate which in itself has gone up in price.
Still... I gonna have to investigate and compare, just to satisfy my own curiosity. They claim that ethanol burning is safe to use indoors because of the cleaner burning and the byproducts of burning are basically CO2 and water.
There is one trick to this whole thing. The higher ethanol stoves burn hotter. Not all stoves can handle it. It's not so much that your stove will melt down into a puddle of metal, not at all. Rather, you may get a sooty, yellow flame on high ethanol content alcohol. The greater heat content IS there, but you need to be getting clean, blue flames in order to be assured that you're getting all of the potential heat out of a given type of alcohol.
I'm currently working with a stove designer on just such a thing. I hope to have a blog post up about it in a couple of weeks.
In the mean time, please let us know how this new fuel works vis a vis methyl hydrate (which I think is mostly methanol -- that name isn't really used in the US).
HJ
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