Boil water in a plastic bottle when you go camping
Published by Cristian January 15th, 2008 in Tricks. Tags: camping.
It is obvious that to boil some water for a tea or something when you go camping you need some fire, but you can’t put plastic on fire because it will be melted, right? Well…not really.
The guy in the video proved that you can boil water by putting a plastic bottle directly in the fire. The only condition is the bottle to be completely fiiled with liquid.
I haven’t tried the trick yet but seems very handy.
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25 Responses to “Boil water in a plastic bottle when you go camping”
- 1 Trackback on Mar 22nd, 2008 at 4:59 am
Impressive !! Thanks for the tip !
I’d think the heat would release some chemicals from the plastic into the liquid. I’m not sure though, but I’ve heard you shouldn’t even drink from plastic water bottles that have been sitting in the sun because of this.
Interesting video nonetheless.
Dijon is right. Before you try this, fill up a bottle of water and throw it in your backseat for an day in the summer heat/sun and then take a drink. Many don’t realize that the bottles you drink from are not grade A plastics.
Also, wouldn’t the bottle explode from the pressure if the water actually came to a boil? That would be pretty dangerous. Also, if you can’t boil the water, what’s the point?
I watched Survivorman do this once, but I don’t remember if he left the lid on or not.
The same principle works if you try heating a paper cup full of water on a stove. You’d expect the bottom of the paper cup to burn being in direct contact with the element, but nothing happens.
Yeah, this should work.
Dirty water left in sunlight for a few days will purify. This is advocated as a potential water purifying solution for Africa.
What’s to release out of the plastic?
That’s a very useful trick that I’ve done quite a few times before. The water can’t go over 100°C, which is a safe temperature for water, yet there are reasons why this isn’t as useful:
Steam, or water vapor can go over 100°C, so all plastic has to remain wet, if a bit on the top is exposed, it might melt, the wet plastic won’t release chemicals (unless you are not using a water/juice/soda bottle which is really stupid)
Water tends to evaporate. The cap prevents this, but that energy that isn’t heating the bottle is pushing outwards, so it might explode, burning those who get wet, and turning the fire off.
Finally when you remove the cap it could explode on your face, and give a nasty burn.
If you want to heat water and only have a plastic bottle/cap/condom, fill it with water (not fully), hang it over the fire, that requires you to get creative, but it’s not impossible if you could start a fire (protip: get a stick), just let it hang, it won’t be as fast but much safer, if it’s a bottle with a cap, remove the cap carefully, if it’s a bag/condom, tear a bit, water shouldn’t come out, and the plastic shouldn’t melt.
Now for really fun stuff throw a closed tuna can into a fireplace and get a meter or two away.
P=VT
If the volume (V) is the same and the temperature (T) rises, then the pressure (P) will rise as well. The reason that the bottle did not explode was because he only had it on there for a few minutes. It wasn’t long enough to build up enough pressure. I would be afraid of leaving the bottle on the fire for too long though.
OK I may embarrass myself with my lack of physics knowledge here, but is this something to do with the water convecting the heat away from the plastic so it doesn’t melt? So if the plastic melts at more than 100 degrees it wouldn’t start to melt until the water was boiling…
yeah this is a really bad idea
when you heat up plastic, it releases estrogen which will give you female characteristics if you’re a guy, and is generally unhealthy otherwise
Used to do this as a kid with gallon of milk (filled with water) over the camp fire if you leave the lid off the plastic will melt as the water evaporates kinda of a cool effect eventually it will collapse and hit the fire.
RE: Dave “P=VT”
since that equation is an ideal gas equation, it won’t actually affect this situation, as there is no gas inside the bottle. with liquids the pressure might rise a tiny bit, but not enough to seriously endanger yourself or people around.
great comments thread everyone
I looked into the plastic bottle chemical issue (well at least the first 5 google results) and it basically comes down to some plastics are “safe” and some are unsafe (PVC being dangerous and PET bottles baing “safe”). Safe is in inverted commas because there is no real scientific consensus due to lack of available (and sometime incorrect) data. “Safe” really means the dangers are unkown.
This method, it seems, is useful only to heat water, and it is only generally non-toxic. Probably not the method to use in the deep african jungle with a dodgy gallon bottle and stagnant water but good enough for tea at a pinch if you have lost all your worldly possessions.
To the person who wrote P=VT, not only are you trying to use the ideal gas law, but also you got it wrong. it’s PV = T*some constant (eg. nR or Nk, depending on your units, and assuming a closed container).
Anyway, since water has such a high specific heat capacity, all of the energy from the fire will go into raising the temperature of the water. This is why we can do parlor tricks in chemistry lectures like putting your wet hand into a flame or boiling water in a paper cup over a bunsen burner. All the water has to be boiled off before the cup will be consumed by fire.
In this specific video, he capped the bottle, which is why it was important that no air was inside; otherwise you could apply the principles of the ideal gas law to predict that the bottle would explode.
If you could come up with some way to hold the bottle above the flame rather than just stick it into the fire, you could place an uncapped, half-full bottle of water on top of the fire and just boil the water. No melted plastic — I guarantee it.
With regard to the controversy about chemicals from the plastic contaminating the water — it seems that it is in fact a controversy. A lot of published papers disagree in terms of their findings.
Chris noted above that heated plastic releases estrogen, but this is not really true. Many plastic water bottles have a component known as bisphenol A, which is a building block of the polymer that makes plastic. Bisphenol A mimics estrogen, but it is unclear whether heating of the plastic to a mere 100 celsius will degrade the polymer.
I’m going to err on the side of caution and recommend that you NOT cook your food in plastic until there is substantial evidence that heating plastic is harmless.
Best of luck, campers!
I once cooked a can of beans (opened) on a fire without decanting them first… Not advisable.
this is for my writing class.
“John pours a cup of boiling water into a tin can and immediatly screws the top on tightly. As the air and water cool, the can collapses. What is probably the cause?”
can u help me? this doesnt have to do w/ this video, but its the best i can find. and i agree that its very unhealthy for you and bad for the environment (what with the production and disposing of plastic in general)
I have also seen this done with a wax paper cup. I have never tried the plastic bottle will have to try it on my next camping trip. Thanks
Actually, you can boil water in a PAPER cup in a fire. it will burn down the rim until it gets to the water, but otherwise, it will boil without a problem. this is much better because plastic, exposed to heat releases chemicals which are cancer causing. You should NEVER cook food in plastic containers if you can avoid it. Free radicals are released when the plastic is nuked.
Eric
This is actually a very old trick.
You can also boil water in a PAPER cup.
The trick is that the water in the cup takes away the heat from the container as fast as the fire provides it, preventing damage to the container.
Plastic contains Bisphynol-A, a highly toxic ‘Gender-bending’ chemical. Not sure if bottles contain that.
Saw it with a balloon - The balloon was filled with water and held to a flame, but it didn’t burn, melt, or burst.
DO NOT do this
the everyday plastic bottle or Nalgene contains cancer causing Dioxin
While it is fine to just drink from these bottles because the dioxin is contained safely within the plastic, when you boil it under extreme heat, the dioxins release into the water, getting a very high and possibly chronic dose.
drink from plastic in normal conditions. just dont put it into extreme heat, dishwashing and microwaving are bad enough
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