Expert: George Maxwell - 9/21/2007

Question
I want to take fat which I have rendered from fatty meat & turn it into fuel tablets.
a fuel tablet is what is sometimes used in camping to cook with they are sometimes known as "hexamine fuel tablet".
they are approximately 45mm square and 10mm thick, you ignite them, put them in a ventilated container place a pan on top & cook.
I have read about tallow (fat) candles & thought ah if I could make them into fuel tablets that would be good so I first tried by putting a mix of fat & shredded news paper in a tin & igniting it, it didn't work very well. so what I am after is something to mix with the fat in the tin so that when I ignite it it has a continuos burn, I would prefer that something to be either free or very cheap.


Answer
Hi, and thanks for your question.

The usual way of doing this is to melt some fat in a pan, and pour the liquid fat in to a tin with a string wick in it: the fat then solidifies in to a big "candle", which is then used for heating.

However, there are two big disadvantages to this method:

1) The flame is VERY sooty, annoying if you're camping and it cakes your equipment in carbon deposits.

2) After a while, the grease in the tin gets hot enough to ignite fully: you then have a mini-grease fire, which will explode if water gets in the tin.

When I go camping, I use a tin packed with cottton-wool balls which are soaked in vegetable oil. This gives a good flame but is still sooty.

Hope this helps!