While we’ve heard of DIY strategies for transferring gasoline from one isobutane canister (those usually utilized in backpacking) to a different, we haven’t seen a devoted valve designed for the aim marketed to the out of doors world but. Well, till lately.
Eric Flottman, an Arizona-based backpacker, was uninterested in the partially crammed cans piling up in his storage, so he got down to design a easy, cheap system to repair that. It depends on easy physics to work.
When gasoline is chilly, it condenses. When it will get heat, it expands. To use the Flipfuel, you set the canister you wish to fill (the consumption) within the freezer to sit back the gasoline and the one you wish to empty (the output) is sitting squarely in daylight to heat the gasoline.
You wait a couple of minutes for the temperature differential to extend, then pop the consumption can out of the freezer, thread on the FlipFuel, connect the output canister, and open the valve. The heat gasoline expands into the colder canister, and voila, you now have one empty can and one which’s, properly, not empty.
That final bit generally is a downside as you actually don’t wish to overfill a gasoline canister. Unfortunately there’s not a simple option to inform how full a canister is. A way we like is floating the canisters in water. Some manufacturers (MSR is one) print a small label on the canisters that present the approximate degree of gasoline that shall be within the can when it floats at a specific degree. As lengthy as you conduct one thing just like the float take a look at and make sure the cans you’re filling are lower than half full, you have to be good to go.
Of course, then you definitely nonetheless have to responsibly get rid of the spent canister and right here’s a superb primer on that.
Would be cooler if there was a option to merely refill the cans one way or the other, fairly than have to purchase new ones on a regular basis, however this can be a step within the course of far much less waste.
The system prices $35, and, conveniently, weighs 35 grams, although exhausting to think about carrying one with you within the backcountry.