Aluminium cooking pots vs Titanium cooking pots .
Five years ago when I first started to get into lightweight bushwalking I replaced my super heavy MSR Alpine Stainless Steel pots (741.5g) with a two lighter Titanium Snow Peak pots (316.7g), this was a saving of 424.8g, after several years of faithful use, on one trip I wanted to cook a gourmet meal where I needed some slightly larger pots. I therefore went through my collection of pots, carefully weighing each one to work out which combination of two pots gave me the volume that I needed with the lightest combination, the combination that I ended up with was two cheap aluminium pots which I had purchased from my local camping shop. While the Ti pots are very tough, Ti is a very poor conductor of heat and whenever I tried to reheat a meal like a curry the food got burnt where the stove flame had contact with the bottom of the pot and was very hard to clean. After using the cheap Al pots I have never gone back to the Ti as the food does not burn in the Al pots and after several years of use the Al pots are still in good condition.
Moving on a couple of years, to complete a series of tests on pots for a BPL article, I borrowed a set of lightweight MSR Titan pots, this kit includes pots of 1l and 1.5l volume, this set retails in Australia for A$189. The two MSR Titan pots came with one lid with a total weight of 306.6 grams, this includes the pot grabber or the storage bag.
My two cheap Al pots that I normally take use, a 1.5l pot and a 1.75l pot with one lid come to total weight of 243.6 grams, and have a cost of A$24.00 (these pots have had the wire handle removed and some of the lugs that the wire handle attached to removed).
If I use some Al pots with the same volume as the Titan pots a 1l pot and a 1.5l pot with one lid the total weight is 219.6 grams, this is a saving of over 30 grams just for the pots, the two Al pots with pot grabber and storage bag from the Snow peak Ti pots, the saving is even greater at 255.2g this is a saving of 51.4 g over the 306.6g Titan pot set, the 1l pot cost A$8 and the 1.5l pot costs A$10 so this twp pot set comes to A$18 .
Now are Ti pots more efficient than Al pots, from my tests Ti pots appear to be slightly more efficient that Al pots but this is very small. As Ti is a much poorer conductor than Al, why are Ti pots not less efficient than Al pots, I am not quite sure but I do have some thoughts and it has something to do with the emissivity of the pot surfaces, the Ti pots have a darker and slightly rougher surface than the Aluminum pots.
With my Al pots, instead of the wire handles which I have removed I use a lightened pot gripper that I purchased from the same shop as the pots, gripper cost the A$7, the pot gripper that came with the MSR titan kit weighs 28.1g and my modified gripper weighs 28.5g.
Now for the big question “are Ti pots really worth the money” as far as I am concerned NO, for a given volume they are no lighter, they may or may not be a little more efficient, it is very easy to burn food in Ti pots and they cost much more.
For now I am going to stick to my cheap aluminium pots.
Food certainly will catch in titanium pots if you don’t stir constantly. I guess this is one of the reasons why food in pouches has taken off. More importantly, much more importantly, if the oxide coating a titanium pot gets scratched, titanium seems to catalyse reactions which ruin a mug of tea. (I usually carry one pot and no cup.)
In 1984 I bought my second set of aluminium, Field and Trek Lightline billies. The first set was a bit battered after use on camp fires and as bread tins. I still have both sets and regularly cook with both at home as pot grips make more sense to me on a hot stove than saucepan handles. I can’t help noticing their gauge now that titanium is down to 0.3 mm. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why titanium catches so easily and heats food efficiently. Also, titanium pots often seem to be quite tall and narrow. I wonder if this enhances convection currents. It certainly makes stew harder to stir.
Hi Blogger Zed,
Thank you for your comments, I do have one Ti pot that the water tastes terrible from it and I have wondered why.
Many of the Ti pots are so thin that they can be crushed out of shape very easily and I think one of the reasons that food catches so easily with Ti pots is that it is such a poor conductor of heat.
I have also noticed that a lot of Ti pots are very narrow, this is not helping efficiency of fuel use, I think the manufacturers are going that because consumers want narrow pots for convenience.
Tony
Personally I find the Ti pots are stronger and more flexible than Al and therefore less likely to be squashed out of shape, so the lid no longer fits.
Hi Bushwalker,
You do have a point with the Ti pots being stronger, but since I have gone back to aluminium I have not had any problems with lids not fitting, they do have some small dents in them but so do my old Ti pots though I do pack my pots deep inside my pack.
Tony
Hey Tony,
First thanks for following my blog. Just noticed you started following me and I have been reading through a bunch of your blogs and following you now too!!
You made the statement “from my tests Ti pots appear to be slightly more efficient that Al pots but this is very small. As Ti is a much poorer conductor than Al, why are Ti pots not less efficient than Al pots, I am not quite sure”
You know, that has puzzled me for a long time. Ti has a thermal conductivity of 21.9 and Ai has a thermal conductivity of 237. So, how in the world does that make any logic at all that Ti pots are performing better than Ai pots. It completely makes no sense at all.
Something I think a lot more hikers should start doing is using short and wider pots. It seems to me that the less height of water from the stove the faster the water will boil. A taller pot means it has to heat water further away, right?
Hi John,
I am enjoying reading your blog, though I have been distracted with the hunting in NSW National Parks issue lately.
>You know, that has puzzled me for a long time. Ti has a thermal conductivity of 21.9 and Ai has a thermal conductivity of 237. So, how in the world does that make any logic at all that Ti pots are performing better than Ai pots. It completely makes no sense at all.
A very good question.
The main reason I think why there is not much difference between Al and Ti is because pots are very thin and this negates most of the difference in thermal conductivity, another difference is emissivity, the Ti pots have a better emissivity than the Al pots, I ran some test on some blackened and polished Al pots, the blackened pots came out on top but not by much.
>Something I think a lot more hikers should start doing is using short and wider pots. It seems to me that the less height of water from the stove the faster the water will boil. A taller pot means it has to heat water further away, right?
Yes this very true, a wider pot is better, for most stoves a pot of around 150 mm is a good size.
Tony
Dear John and Tony
I’m not sure about whether high conductivity really reduces burning. If this were so then iron (32) pots would be intermediate between aluminium (124) and titanium (11-13) and copper (213) would burn the least. Is this so?
You mentioned the gauge. How does .3mm compare to the thickness of your aluminium and what does this imply? Is the heat conductivity directly proportional?
An interesting question!
Now here’s an article (January 20, 2000 | By ROBERT L. WOLKE The Washington Post) to confuse things.
“The ideal frying pan will distribute the burner’s heat uniformly over its surface, transfer it quickly to the food and respond promptly to changes in heat settings. That boils down to two qualities: thickness and heat conductivity. So look for a thick pan made out of a metal that conducts heat as efficiently as possible.”
The ideal frying pan should be silver and thick????
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2000-01-20/news/0001191148_1_sauteing-heat-copper
Not sure I agree with the logic.
I could somewhat agree with that that guy is saying… IF… fuel consumption was not an issue. The idea there being that a pan with more mass cooks more efficiently. The problem is that a thicker pan and material that conducts more heat requires more heat(fuel) in order to get it hot.
Ok so this is an old post that is new to me. My understanding is that the heat transfer between your gas fire and either titanium or aluminum pot will depend on a great many things other than just the thermal conductivity and the emissivity. Emissivity itself will vary with surface conditions – higher in rough and oxidized and lower in reflective or polished surfaces. Radiation heat tranfer is also a function of surface area, but not only that, but also the fire you have going under the pot. The fire doesn’t just transfer heat by thermal radiation, but also by convection of the hot combusted gasses and water vapor, and that depends also on various other parameters like the shape of the flow of the gases hitting the pot which differs from bottom of pot to even the side of the pot. Evenness of heating is characterized by another value related to thermal conductivity, called the Biot number, and includes a factor of thicknes. With camping in an ultralight fashion with the lightest possible stuff and trying to achieve good results i think the choice of stove (especially flame control or flame shape i.e. jet vs diffuse) and perhaps the use of a windshield or wrap around “heat exchanger” may make the biggest difference in quality of even heating. I say that because like one of your other comments stated they are all very thin and unless there is a huge difference in form factor they will probably perform very similarly.
Titanium pots get hot spots because they’re thin and have low heat conductivity. That’s why (non-camping) pans have thick bottoms – to allow the heat to spread sideways, preventing hot spots and giving an even heat. Sometimes copper is / was used on the pan’s bottom because it is a good heat conductor helping this spreading of heat.
So heat conductivity is about spreading heat, not transfering heat from the flame to the inside of the pan – don’t worry, if there’s a flame under a metal pan, the heat will get through!
I don’t like that aluminium (oxide) is poisonous but I’m keen to have the option to cook a good meal rather than just boil water.
Now: how about someone bringing out a titanium pan with an aluminium layer stuck under the bottom? Would the differential in heat expansion be a problem?
Maybe we can try having a free standing aluminium plate that the ti pan can sit on and which would spread the heat before it reaches the pan. It would have to be a flat bottomed pan … ??
Reblogged this on Walking With David and commented:
My backpacking cooking needs are changing. So when scouring the web for something in titanium, I came across this. Some of it surprises me. Aluminium conducts heat far faster than Titanium, so I’m guessing requires different management… still overall I found this useful.
Just on this very last point. I think that the thermal conductivity of aluminium is very much higher than that of titanium. Titanium will take longer to heat, and longer to cool in the same conditions. Which would suggest it’s worth researching whether cooking with a titanium pot needs more fuel, especially in windy conditions, than cooking with Aluminium.
If you’re below the snow line and cooking with fuel you are foraging that won’t matter, if you are above the snow line and melting snow for water. It will.
And which is why maybe, aluminium mugs burns/blisters my lips and fingers, and titanium doesn’t. Or maybe I just have expensive tastes. I’ve just switched back from alu to a couple of very small stainless pots for solo trekking with foraged fuel – and changed the way I cook.
I’ve just reblogged (WordPress reblog command) you. Hope you’re OK with that: @BestWalks / WalkingWithDavid.com