White spirit

Quick question. Can I use white spirit as opposed to meths in my tilley preheat torch as I have loads of the former and little of the latter?

 

I would not.

 

White spirit as I know it, is basically mineral spirit. Slightly lighter, perhaps a little more refined than kerosene but not much. Burns pretty much the same(rather yellow-flamed and sooty).
Its totally a different stuff from the meths(denatured alcohol).
Not quite suitable for opened, spirit cup type of preheat but not a problem for the 'rapid' type of preheaters such as those found on a Petromax.

 

Cool. Thanks guys.

 

I was given quite a bit of "old meths" possibly a couple of litres which is sitting in the garage and i'm just up the road from you if you want to try some?

 

That would be very kind of you. If you let me know where I will divest you of a modest quantity.

 

Just a question: can you buy pure alcohol at the pharmacy?

 

@David Lawlor

You're welcome to it, if you pm me your address i will pop it over at some point in the near future.

 

Its unlikely you could buy from a pharmacy or any other convenience stores, pure alcohols(ethanol, mixtures thereof or even methylated spirits) that are completely free from traces of water. Pure simple alcohols are likely to attract moisture from the air, which would quickly make them impure.
Completely drying them is rather an involved process and not necessary for preheat purposes.

 

You can buy Bio-Ethanol from B&Q in the UK. About £5 for 5L last time I bought any. It is clear and works just as well as Meths for lighting up.

Whether it would be any good as fuel for a lamp that runs on Ethanol I don't know. Water content might be too high.

 

There's a good fuel thread over on the sister site.

Good places to buy fuel

 

I have used surgical spirits on occasion for lighting stoves and lamps, burns with a near invisible flame, I suspect this must be a very pure form of alcohol.

 

@Juan, yes you can buy "pure" alcohol at a pharmacy.
But you have to pre order it and only in small batches.
Normal available is 70-96% ethanol ketonatus.

If you order 200ltr you should wait for the customs to check the seals on the barrel and they put the "anti drink" poison stuff into the barrel. Then you may use it and don't have to pay tax (as for a liquor).

 

Ok. Here you can't buy 200 litres but you can buy it at the pharmacy with no restriction and for pre-heating a 500 ml bottle a month is enough. The strenght of this kind of alcohol here is 96% and is the one I use for pre heating.

You can go in and out form several pharmacies and if you want in this way you can buy 200 litres.

You can also buy it at the supermarket.

But is difficult to fin methanol.

Juan

 

You could use cheap whiskey or other spirits instead of Meths.... bloody expensive way to start a lantern but you could!

 

Dynamite?? That would get it going! All kidding aside, I use denatured alcohol. I can get it in the paint area at Walmart. It's used as a fuel in little marine stoves, too.
I found this is the best and easiest to get for me. It's not real expensive either.

 

96% would be alright. Pure would be 100%, which is usually not available to the general public.
You can get that from a laboratory chemicals or certain industrial chemical suppliers.

 

@george If you go to the auto section of Walmart, the yellow HEET in the 4 pack is less expensive than denatured alcohol in the paint section.

 

Thanks, Mark. I going to have to look into that!