I have a friend who has pursued building alcohol stoves for years with a passion that is reminiscent of the most elite members of our forum here and some of the light builds they do. Today I got an enthusiastic email from him because he finally did a trade with a machinist where he works and came up with a die for what he feels is the best design on the landscape so far. It seems to have been the brainchild of Mini Bull Designs Bios and it requires the Bud Light stadium bottles as the “host”. For the past year Jeff has been experimenting with such factors as the number, diameter, and positioning of the jets, fuel types, etc. In the meantime I have carried a Mini Bull Bios and a M4 for the past couple of years along with a custom built resizable titanium/rare earth magnet windscreen that I made up. We have tested lots of brands of gas line antifreeze as the yellow HEET is hard to find in Canada (I have friends that bring it up north for me along with Bud Light Stadium beer, which is the most god awful stuff to drink just so you can get the empty, you can’t even give it away in Canada). The best is the ethanol I make from turbo yeast, sugar from Costco, and evaporation, but that takes a long time, and is not cheap in the end. We have also found that the ‘Super TECH’ gas line antifreeze from Wal Mart is not too bad, and it’s what I turn to if I can not find HEET. For anyone new to alcohol stoves, they are not suitable for winter use, and not a good choice for Thru Hiking as at that point the weight liability of the ethanol required for multi day preparation of freeze dried food overtakes the weight advantage of the super lightweight alcohol stove. And in the same vein the wood burning stoves are not viable for serious backpacking in periglacial regions such as the Canadian Rockies: I do however have a Vargo Titanium Hexagonal Backpacking wood stove that I bought before I made my own titanium screen and that also serves as a great windscreen for alcohol stoves (much better than alu sheet).
well i bought a solo stove. couldnt resist it… i have no self control 
but use coupon code “SPRING15” and get $15 off your order… ends today though supposedly. but from what i can tell they always have special deals going on.
just under $55 shipped to my door, but wont be able to get a run down to you guys before the coupon is inactive… but i will tell you guys what i think about it
edit: kind of cant wait. i have stoves that can burn propane, coleman fuel, kerosene, diesel, alcohol… pretty much any flammable liquid… but not wood yet, and ive read it works good with an alcohol burner in it too
also, not affiliated in any way at all, just wanted to give a last minute notice to anyone interested. actually, im not affiliated with anyone. totally unbiased. any manufacturers or resellers want to change that? :bigsmile:
edit again: its almost 12:30 am april 14th, and the coupon still works… so maybe this will go longer than they said. i know they have been doing a lot of promotions like half offs and free stove with a video review…
well got the stove yesterday, and played with it a little tonight. i like it!
kind of sucks because its been wet up here, so all my tinder is damp.
tried using dried up dead grass, but too wet, just smoldered. so i went and hopped across my stream and got a few small pieces of birch bark. balled up some birch bark and piled some tiny twigs on it, and lit it. went roaring.
had about 10 pieces of a damp branch about 2” long about the diameter of a AAA. brought an unknown amount of water to a bubble, not a boil… used a small 6”ish diameter machined aluminum pie pan filled with water. didnt want to blacken up my pots yet. think i will get this stove its own cook set so i dont care.
built from instructions here
i still need to finish building the “colonnade”, but working great!
took a while to make up to the point i am at. if i was at my dads shop i could build one in an hour probably with the proper tools
used a knife file to cut the bottles. used books stacked to get the knife file at the proper height for the cut. rotated the bottle a few times to get a groove around the bottle, and then filed through the rest of the way by hand.
for the jet deck, i used a 1/4” drill bit to get a hole in the center, reamed out to 3/4” with a hand reamer, and then filed by hand out to 1-5/16” by hand with a precision half round file… very, very time consuming…
this design is horribly inefficient. i think if i drilled the jets so the flame angled away from the burn bowl a little it would be more efficient. half oz of fuel will not bring two cups to a rolling boil. it will get it very hot and very bubbly though
the burner design is to the jets also heat the burn bowl. with the jets going straight up, the whole flame hits the burn bowl, super heating the alcohol. i think if i angle the jets out a little i will have a smaller flame, longer run time, and less wasted heat from the flame rolling over the edge of the pot.
at least thats my theory on it. i may take the drill bit, and kind of tweak the jets out a little just by putting the bit in the hole and bending it outward slightly
edit: i didnt take notes on the burn time of the half oz of fuel, but it was either 2:23 or 2:32
well new project today sort of.
have a peltier unit off a wine fridge i scavenged. the cool side has a small heatsink about the size of a deck of cards, the hot side has a large heatsink the size of a 500w car audio amp.
i heated the cold side with a butane torch, i dont know to what temp. but it was outputting 3.95v at 1.15a. a lil over 4.5 watts of not so free energy. these butane canisters arent cheep :bigsmile:
now i just need to create a stove for it, either wood gas or alcohol, and rig up a couple 120mm fans to pull heat off the large heatsink. use one of my kis modules hooked up to a USB hub.
im thinking a wood gas stove, just to make free power
I have to admit I’ve always been REALLY interested in thermoelectrics. And this looks like an interesting project. One thing, though. I would actually consider getting more modules so that you can actually generate some real, usable power. A HUGE part of the problem with using a single module is that, if you use fans, that takes up such a huge chunk of that 4.5W that you end up with very little power left after powering the fans. But with additional modules,you can actually use ALL the power generated by those modules. And Peltier modules are actually quite cheap. Seebeck modules (designed around generation rather than refrigeration) cost a good deal more, but perform better at higher temperatures. But they may not be worth the money for your project.
i only heated it for a min or so, and didnt actually put the flame on the heat exchange. it was still rising when i cut heat. the problem is, there is styrofoam on it between the module and the larger “hot side” heat sink. i have to separate the module from the heat sinks and get all the styrofoam and double sided tape off it.
i will see how this works with one module, i dont have a lot of money to sink into projects ATM.
i need to get it to output more than 5v to the kis module to be able to regulate the output voltage. im also thinking i may want to use some 7135 chips to limit current to the USB hub.
but im not sure exactly. the electronics in the device (cell phone, mp3 player, gps…) may regulate the current to the batteries while charging. once i get the project going a little further i may start a separate thread on this and ask a few of our resident electronic gurus for some help and tips
once i get a stove built and tested with one module, i may search for a few more cheap modules on ebay to boost performance. but at this point its just something to play with
just in case anyone is wondering, this project is inspired by BioLite
Are you sure it’s styrofoam? If it IS, it sounds like the refrigerator was designed by a certified idiot. You want to ENHANCE thermal conductivity between your module and heat sinks, NOT block it.
I think it was to seal off the cold side (inside of wine cooler) from the hot side. But I think they loaded the hot side with adhesive to the heat sink… Can nor seperate it. Maybe it’s screwed on, there are two round holes filled with adhesive…
My guess is the two sides are screwed together. I would check those holes to see if there are screws holding the two sides together.
i got it apart. it was all glued. i have two heat sinks now. one is HUGE. i am thinking about tapping some holes into it to attach a star for led testing. may just give them away to anyone interested.
the hot side and cold side had good contact to their respective heat sinks.
this thing is waaay smaller than i had expected it to be. 4x40x40mm. its like a ceramic tile.
maybe i will get to some more testing on it this weekend
Those things are fun!
Sadly, the cooling elements are usually not made for temperature differences much higher than ~70°C(~160°F?), so one should be careful not to crack them. (But they go for ~3…4 bucks on ebay, not that big of a loss )
If you are in the mood for some experiments some time I would be interested in your set up/Results! 
This looks interesting, charge your batteries
at the same time you’re making coffee
I have got an idea on the stove, not really sure about the electronics yet though. It will be a wood stove, because using any other sort of fuel just does not make sense on this project
Wood would be great!
Well, the overkill electronics would be some kind of mpp tracking converter . . . . but if your voltage stays under 5V, you could give one of those usb chargers a try click
I use one of them for charging from two alkaline cells and they are surely worth their 2.5$. 
I have been using the biolite lately and its a lot of fun. Uses sticks and twigs and allows you to ave a fire when open fires are not permitted. I used a piece of cedar driftwood about 1”x8”x2’ to cook and grill and entire meal ! Pretty cool, the fan makes it very hot, efficient and quite smokeless.
yeah, i like the looks of the biolite, but i cant afford one. ill try my best to make one though
for now i am thinking of using a kis 3r33s module (modded) to reglulate it to 5v, and then go from there to a usb port. i am hoping from that i can charge a 18650 backup battery pack charger.
but i still have to test this peltier module more first too. i wish i knew the model/part number to it so i could see some specs on it...
Sadly it counts as open fire over here. Damn red-tape loving German authorities. 
That thing is a little outside my price range but looks awesome!
a lot of places in the US too. a lot of places that are restricted, you usually have to have a stove with an on/off switch. though i think you would usually have a little leeway with something like this