Some hand-formed heavy duty aluminum foil gives big gains

I like using tall/skinny titanium pot for solo camping but find this shape doesn’t capture the heat from stove particularly well. I hand formed a corrugated heatsink and outer windscreen from .005" aluminum foil. It makes a big difference in my initial tests. I do need to test the pot with just a plain windscreen of foil (I expect this configuration to perform somewhere between the poor performance of the bare pot, and the great performance of the heatsink)

I know that running the burner full throttle is wasteful with fuel - you aren’t transferring that heat to the pot, but I figured it was at least consistent between the tests. I plan on repeating the test at different settings to dial in the best most efficient use of fuel. I don’t really care if heating the water takes 2 minutes or 5. In the end I am more concerned with efficient use of the fuel (weight) I carry.

Conditions:

  • Air temp = 79F
  • Wind = very light breeze, 5 mph or less.
  • Fuel = MSR Iso Butane, Full 500gram bottle
  • Stove = Snowpeak Gigapower - throttled up until no increase in sound was heard (full throttle)
  • Initial water temp = 62F +/-.1F
  • Water volume = 600ml

Without Heatsink:

  • Time to 100F = 1:05
  • Time to 192F = 5:15
  • Additional temp rise after shutoff = 3F (final temp = 195F)

With Heatsink/shield

  • Time to 100F = 55s
  • Time to 192F = 2:30
  • Additional temp rise after shutoff = 12F (Final temp 204F)