Fuel tests, part 2

Biodiesel is a promising fuel that I recently learned about, and I wanted to give it a burn-test to find out how suitable it is for firedancing. Also, since I had never done a burn-test on the fuel I use most, lamp oil, I wanted to test that as well.

Together with my co-investigator Lisa, we conducted the following tests.

Table 1: Times for different fuels (min:sec)

	Kerosene	Biodiesel	Lamp oil
Test 1	X	5:30, thready 8:00, turned blue 9:10, out	4:20, thready 5:30, turned blue 7:20, out
Test 2	5:30, thready 6:00, turned blue 6:45, out	5:30, thready 7:00, turned blue 7:37, out	X
Test 3	3:20, thready 4:50, turned blue 5:40, out	X	4:50, turned blue 6:30, out

Fuels

Kerosene: generic red kerosene.
Biodiesel: "Soypower"
Lamp oil: Lamplight Farms "Ultra-pure"

Wicks

I used three old wicks for this test. Each had 50-60 burns in it, almost always with lamp oil. There may have been some residual lamp oil in them.

Procedures:

I spun these wicks by hand on my regular chains (20" from my hands to the top of the wicks) at a steady rate of roughly 90 RPM. In each test, one wick would be soaked in one fuel, the other wick in a different fuel. Each fuel wound up being tested twice, and the same wick would be used in the same fuel for both tests.

Comments

Kerosene was by far the smokiest, hottest, and sootiest. It also started with the biggest, loudest flame. Very smelly.
Biodiesel was not as smoky as kerosene, but still smoky. Very smelly--not necessarily smellier than kerosene, but it was an unfamiliar smell, and so stood out. Coolest flame of the three: Biodiesel was so cool I almost had to have the flame brushing my bare skin to feel the heat. The 9:10 burn time is the longest I have ever recorded with any wicks or any fuel.
Lamp oil: middling flame, middling heat, middling burn time. This "Ultra-Pure" stuff has almost no smell, smoke, or soot, which is nice.

Fuel tests, part 2

Fuels

Wicks

Comments

Links: