Best firelighters

[spudulike]

Yes, it was the larva of the glow worm, that and the paraffin works really well! 

[Billhook]

I just gather all the bits and pieces falling from my box wedge splitter.  You can see at the end of the viseo.  I have now rigged up a bag for them to fall into rather than picking them up off the floor.

 

 

[neiln]

Somebody above said plastic milk bottles.  I have thought about that before and tried, without success, to find a definitive answer.  There are at least 3 very common plastics usually used for bottles that are just carbon, hydrogen and perhaps oxygen.

PET, (C10H8O4)n

PP, (C3H6)n

PE (C2H4)n

Now although they won't burn cleanly and will produce soot, do they produce any 'nasty' products of combustion?  I mean, burning PVC is really bad, it contains chlorine and a combustion product is dioxins that are really very poisonous, but pure hydrocarbon plastics I'm not clear on.  I mean, I wouldn't promote running a stove on them or sticking your head over the flue for a lung full, but I wouldn't do that with paper or wood either.  A few strips of milk bottle would likely be a super firestarter, but would it be any more nasty than a wax soaked sawdust ball? 

 

When I've tried I've been unable to find any decent scientific paper that explains the combustion of these plastics.  I hence stick to free news paper, plenty of kindling and the occasional baby Bel waxy shell but if a plastic milk bottle could get it roaring fast and be no more polluting then...?

[openspaceman]

2 hours ago, neiln said:

Now although they won't burn cleanly and will produce soot, do they produce any 'nasty' products of combustion?  I mean, burning PVC is really bad, it contains chlorine and a combustion product is dioxins that are really very poisonous, but pure hydrocarbon plastics I'm not clear on. 

 

I'm no chemist but agree burning chlorinated hydrocarbons will produce various dioxins so avoid cling film.

 

The other point I would make is the flame in a wood stove is a diffuse flame, it gets all its oxygen from air that diffuses into the flame from the outside. This limits how much oxygen can get in to burn the flame out. Natural gas in a boiler burns with a pre mixed flame, the fuel and air are intimately mixed before entering the flame so burn out completely in the flame.

 

If you have a heap of plastic as it melts and volatilises  the offgas produced needs to meet sufficient oxygen but it cannot and hence the hydrogen element burns off and the carbon is given off as soot.

 

If you set light to a thin film of polythene it burns with a blue flame, because sufficient oxygen diffuses in, as it gets hotter yellow flames appear and burning droplets (zorch) fall and burn giving off soot.

 

I do tear off smallish piece of bubble wrap and mix with newspaper to start the fire sometimes but mostly use a quarter fire lighter.

[neiln]

Yes I get that, burning a solid is complex and incomplete, especially while the burn is cold as it is on lighting.  So smaller and thinner strips help, lots of it to get things hotter quicker, but whether paper, wood kindling, wax or plastic it will be a bit sooty. I'd just love to get a good answer to whether pet, pe, pp strips burn any worse than/less cleanly/more polluting than the wax or kindling.

[Steven P]

Wonder if this would work (if you want to experiment properly), get a hurricane lantern and set some plastic alight where the wick would be - maybe on a tinfoil tray or something to keep it all nice. See which method soots up the glass the most?