Flare Pans

Faster boil times are claimed for this pan and the design looks like it'd work to me..

I am skeptical...you are not adding any direct surface area to the food inside...looks like a heat sink that releases the heat instead of utilising the heat..imo but been wrong before..

Sounds good, especially for home use.
Duane

I believe the cast pan in the photo is for home use, but the article says the design was intended for backpacking and they (will) make different sizes. I think a stamped pan with a similar design would work better for backpacking, and they may make one. I didn't go any further looking into it than the link.

anicinabe, I'd expect this design would work both ways. It should heat your water faster and take less fuel to boil it, but once the heat source is removed it will cool your water faster too.

I think Jetboil definitively answered the question: can fins reduce boil times? - yes! It looks like a nice pan for home use, but too heavy for backpacking. A stamped pan (like a jetboil) would end up being lighter, but you can run into problems maintaining good contact between the pan and the fins. Small contact issues can result in large thermal resistance.

Fins on the inside would be good for heating water, but would be arduous if you wanted to cook food in the pan and then clean it out afterwards. Once boiling has begun, the fins would not be of much use. The thermal resistance would be dominated by the outside of the pan.

Looks to me that any time saved boiling would be spent cleaning.

The retailer [stockist?] 'splains them pretty well and has more pics. It's not as though we're changing over to cast aluminum for the great outdoors but there might be a way to capitalize on the concept, which seems to be channeling the flame up the sides for even heat and more heat transfer into the pan.

When I tested a Primus stove+pot system with heat-exchanger pot I couldn't pull any performance data showing an improvement (fuel efficiency, boil time) from the pot compared to swapping in an equivalent ti pot, so I'm skeptical there's a significant gain from molding or welding fins onto the pot itself. I suspect the camping systems that are really efficient are that way because of precise burner design and carefully matching the pot, windscreen and insulation to that burner. The heat exchanger seems to play a minimal part of the total benefit.

Cheers,