Portable stove
A portable stove is a cooking stove specially designed to be portable and lightweight, used in camping, picnicking, backpacking, or other use in remote locations where an easily transportable means of cooking or heating is needed. Portable stoves can be used in diverse situations, such as for outdoor food service and catering and in field hospitals.
Since the invention of the portable stove in the 19th century, a wide variety of designs and models have seen use in a number of different applications. Portable stoves can be broken down into several broad categories based on the type of fuel used and stove design: unpressurized stoves that use solid or liquid fuel placed in the burner before ignition; stoves that use a volatile liquid fuel in a pressurized burner; bottled gas stoves; and gravity-fed "spirit" stoves.
History
Early examples
The shichirin, a lightweight charcoal stove, has been used in Japan in much the same form since at least the Edo period. Old shichirin are mainly ceramic and many can be found in old houses. Most modern Shichirin are made by heating diatomaceous earth, but the raw materials are not uniform. There are also shichirin such as those made with a double inside and outside ceramic structure. The shape is mainly cylindrical, square, or rectangular, and the size also varies. Many varieties of shichirin are made for different uses. In North America, they are also known as "hibachi" or "hibachi-style".Early European portable stoves burned animal fat and polar explorers continued to use blubber as a supplement for cooking fuel into the early 20th Century.
Modern era
Modern portable stoves emerged from the mid-19th century. French-born chef, Alexis Soyer, became chef de cuisine at the Reform Club in London from 1837. He instituted many innovations, including cooking with gas, refrigerators cooled by cold water, and ovens with adjustable temperatures. In 1849 Soyer began to market his portable "magic stove" which allowed people to cook food wherever they were. The design of Soyer's "Magic Stove" was based on the same principle as a kerosene lamp, in which a wick is used to draw fuel from a tank or reservoir to a burner.Image:Soyer Stove.png|right|thumb|300px|Alexis Soyer's "Magic Stove", used by British troops during the Crimean War
During the Crimean War, Soyer joined the troops at his own expense to advise the army on cooking. Later he was paid his expenses and wages equivalent to those of a Brigadier-General. He designed his own field stove, the Soyer Stove, and trained and installed in every regiment the "Regimental cook" so that soldiers would get an adequate meal and not suffer from malnutrition or die of food poisoning. Catering standards within the British Army would remain inconsistent, however, and there would not be a single Army Catering Corps until 1945. This is now part of the Royal Logistic Corps, whose catering HQ is called Soyer's House. His stove, or adaptions of it, remained in British military service into the late 20th century.
In the 1850s, the famous Alpine mountaineer Francis Fox Tuckett developed an alcohol stove for campers and mountaineers known as the "Russian furnace". It was also known as the "Rob Roy", after John MacGregor, the renowned canoeist who was nicknamed "Rob Roy". MacGregor's 1866 book, "A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe" was an international success and described his camping methods. Tuckett's stove and integral cook kit was designed to hang from a cord in the interior of a tent.
Fridtjof Nansen also developed an alcohol stove in the 1880s based on the work of Adolphus Greely. This improved on early designs and later became the basis for the Trangia cooker.
Carl Richard Nyberg invented the blowtorch in 1882 and began manufacturing Primus stoves a decade later. The first model, called Viktoria, was not very successful, but the later Svea did better. Other sources credit Frans W Lindqvist for the same thing at the same time.
The use of single burner alcohol stoves for camping, similar to the contemporary Trangia brand, was reported as early as 1919. For many years alcohol-based stoves were used on sailboats rather than stoves using kerosene for safety reasons; these have since been largely replaced by stoves using compressed gas in disposable or refillable canisters. Stoves designed for military use, such as the World War II-era G.I. Pocket Stove, were designed to run on gasoline. So-called "white gas" or naphtha is commonly used as a fuel for camping and backpacking stoves, such as the compact Svea 123. Newer camping stoves are capable of burning multiple types of fuel, which makes them well suited for international travel where some particular types of fuel may not be readily available.
The use of lightweight portable stoves for camping became commonplace in Britain and Europe in the latter half of the 19th Century. The practice gained acceptance later in North America, and coincided with increased awareness of the environmental impact that campers and backpackers had on the areas where they travelled.
Prior to their use, the usual practice when backpacking was to build an open fire for cooking from available materials such as fallen branches. The fire scar left on the ground would remain for two or three years before the vegetation recovered. The accumulation of fire scars in heavily travelled areas detracted from the pristine appearance that backpackers expected, leading to more widespread use of portable stoves.
Uses
Stoves differ widely in their size and portability. The smallest models are generally termed backpacking stoves. They are designed for use in backpacking and bicycle touring, where light weight and small size are paramount considerations. Backpacking stoves consist only of the burner, fuel tank and pot supports. The legs – if any – are often collapsible to minimize the space required. The weight may range from about 1 to 2 ounces for simple alcohol stoves, for MSR-type stoves and canister stoves, and up to for larger stoves. Single burner alcohol stoves, beverage can stoves, and small liquid fuel and gas canister stoves are well suited for backpacking.Camping stoves are designed for use by people travelling by car, boat, canoe, or on horseback. They are similar in function and ease of use to kitchen stovetops, usually with two burners set into a table-like surface, and often with a folding lid for stowage and wind protection. This increases the weight accordingly.
Unpressurized liquid-fuel stoves
Single burner alcohol stoves
The simplest type of stove is an unpressurized single burner design, in which the burner contains the fuel and which once lit burns until it is either extinguished or the fuel is exhausted. There are both liquid- and solid-fuel stoves of this variety. Because they are extremely small and lightweight, this type of stove tends to be favored by ultralight backpackers as well as those seeking to minimize weight and bulk, particularly for extended backpacking trips. Solid-fuel stoves are also commonly used in emergency kits, both because they are compact and the fuel is very stable over time. These simple stoves are also commonly used when serving fondue.The Trangia stove is a popular commercial alcohol stove, which is available in many different models, from a single bare burner to an integrated expedition cooking system. Some of these come with a sealing cover, allowing the burner to be packed while still containing fuel, although putting the lid on while the stove is hot can damage the O ring seal. An even simpler system is the Sterno heater, in which the can that contains a jellied fuel also serves as the burner. Homemade beverage can stoves are similar. These are made from discarded aluminium beverage cans, and come in a wide variety of different designs.
Gravity-fed spirit stoves
The traditional "spirit stove" consists of a small reservoir or fuel tank raised above and to the side of the burner. The fuel tank supplies the methylated spirits under gravity to the burner, where it is vaporized and burned.The gravity-fed spirit stove is still found in many pleasure boats, although it has largely been replaced by compressed gas stoves.
Lighting a gravity-fed spirit stove is similar to lighting a traditional Primus stove. Around each burner is a priming pan used to preheat the burner. To light the stove, the burner is first turned on to allow a small amount of fuel to pass through the burner and collect as a liquid in the priming pan. The burner is then turned off, and the fuel ignited to preheat the burner. When the fuel in the pan is almost all gone, the burner is turned on again, and fuel passes into the burner where it is vaporized and passes through the jets.
These stoves look and even sound a bit like pressurized burner stoves, but the fuel tank is under no pressure. They remain popular for small boats owing to the minimal fire risk they pose in a confined space.
Wicking stoves
Wicking stoves are typically fueled by alcohol or kerosene.- ORIGO alcohol stove
- Project Gaia§The CleanCook Stove
- Butterfly 16-Wick Kerosene Cook Stove
Platinum catalysis stove
- Rechauds Catalytiques
- Therm'x Explorer 57C
- MSR Reactor
- Rechaud A Catalytise Trek 270
Pressurized liquid fuel stoves
Primus stoves
The introduction of the first pressurized burner portable stove is generally credited to Frans Wilhelm Lindqvist, in 1892. Lindqvist's stove was based on the pressurized blowtorch but fitted with an upturned burner assembly of his own design. Together with partner J.V. Svensson, Lindqvist established the Primus brand of stove, which quickly developed into a worldwide market leader.The kerosene burning Primus stoves and their imitators were made of brass and were a significant advance over previous designs, which had used a wick to supply liquid fuel to the burner by capillary action. The Primus burner vaporized the fuel in a loop of pipe which rose up from the fuel tank at the stove's base, and which was pre-heated with alcohol before being combusted in the burner. Initial pressure is provided by a small, hand-operated pump integrated into the stove's fuel tank. The flame on a Primus stove is adjusted by using the pump to increase the pressure in the tank to make the flame larger, or by venting the tank to reduce the pressure and make the flame smaller. Later models used a separate valve to adjust the flame. Primus-style stoves were made in a variety of sizes and styles, and many were designed to be disassembled for storage and transportation in a separate case.