 The following demonstration is for informational purposes only. Please do not attempt. When you think of a lighter, what comes to mind? I think of a torch, a zippo, or a bick. But what are the differences between these three types of lighters? What's inside, and how do they function? Can a bick be refilled? All these answers and more on today's episode of Exploring the Dinosaurs. This is a cyclone. It happens to be a triple flame torch lighter. This is a zippo style lighter. It uses fuel that is liquid at room temperature and pressure. This is a Z plus. It looks like a zippo, sounds like a zippo, but it's actually a butane dual flame torch lighter. And this is a bick lighter. Probably familiar to most of you, it is also a butane lighter. But instead of having a torch flame jet style burner, it uses a very different type of burner. Now let's take each lighter apart and see how they work, beginning with the cyclone. We're now going to disassemble the cyclone. Look at its components, how everything works, and how to fine tune the performance of this lighter to make sure that it works the way that you want it to. So here we have the components of the burner or the jet in a jet flame torch lighter. This is the attachment for the fuel line. This is a filter screen that goes between the attachment for the fuel line. This is the remainder of the Venturi assembly, and this is the entire assembly all in one and a penny for comparison. Now let's track the path of the fuel through the cyclone as it exits the fuel tank. When we depress the button, we're going to be actuating this lever right here, which then opens this valve where we can see there's still one fuel line attached and two points for the other two fuel lines to attach for this triple jet torch lighter. When we press down on this button, the valve will allow fuel to flow. Beginning with the fuel line, just above the valve, liquid fuel is going to flow up the tube to the fuel line attachment point. Going to flow through the filter disc, which is extremely important because when it encounters this plate here with that tiny little orifice in it, this orifice functions as a regulator to regulate how much fuel is introduced into the Venturi. That hole is so small that just the tiniest little bit of debris can plug it or obstruct it and reduce the flow, making the whole torch burner assembly non-functional. An interesting thing happens at the orifice, since the liquid fuel can't come through it very fast, we end up generally creating phase change and creating a stream of high velocity gas coming up through past this air inlet creating a Venturi. So we now have an air fuel mixture flowing up to the upper part of the burner. This is where combustion is supported, is just on the surface of this burner. We also have this other very interesting geometry and it's not just for decoration. This is also a secondary air inlet to make a final adjustment of the air fuel ratio for ideal combustion or stoichiometry and it provides a source of cooling air to keep this metal which is in near direct contact with the burner to help prevent it from overheating. To illustrate how important the orifice on the jet is in regulating fuel flow, I'm going to demonstrate what would happen if it wasn't there. The single flame torch is going to provide ignition of the fuel that's going to come out of our fuel tank as I depress the fuel valve with my thumb. We can see ignition, pressing on the fuel valve, pause. Fuel begins to spray out of the fuel valve. Then we see ignition and a key thing to notice is not only is the flame very big because it is unregulated because it does not have a regulating orifice like we described earlier, it still doesn't come in contact with the fuel coming out of the valve because the fuel coming out of the valve does not have sufficient oxygen combined with it to maintain sufficient stoichiometry to support combustion. Unpause. When I release the valve, pause, we can see the flame comes all the way down on top of the valve, the fuel tank anywhere where any fuel has splashed as well as my hand and continues to burn until it is extinguished with a puff of air or simply runs out of fuel. Pause. This is a perfect example of why you shouldn't play with lighters in this manner unless you have a very solid understanding of what you're working with and what the dangers are. We've shown you how the fuel comes out. Now let's see how the fuel goes in. But first, let's depressurize. I am going to use my pen to release some of the pressure from the fuel storage tank which is then going to lower the temperature inside this tank. You can see the butane is now boiling to produce enough vapor pressure to maintain equilibrium and at the same time our tank is going to be getting cold. You may notice a little bit of condensation on the outside of the tank forming. We've now lowered the pressure and lowered the temperature inside of the fuel tank so now when I put my fuel filler on and push down, fuel flows right back into the tank with no difficulty. It's not air that we're letting out. We're simply letting out liquid butane that has been phase change into vapor form out and by doing this lowers the temperature, lowers the pressure and makes it much easier for the fuel in the can to flow into the lighter. Now let's take a look at a Zippo-style lighter. We have our ignition source here and we have this little surround which functions to regulate the air-fuel mixture or ratio so we can have appropriate stoichiometry have a good flame. This one is positionable so we can better access, trim, extend or retract the wick which provides the surface area for the liquid fuel to evaporate at a fast enough rate to provide a combustible gas to mix with the available oxygen and provide a sustainable flame. What we don't see here is this lighter is effectively leaking combustible gas anytime the lid is open and to a limited extent even when the lid is shut because this lid is not gas tight. The difference is it's a fuel that is generally liquid at room temperature and atmospheric pressure so it evaporates relatively slow. This is why the wick is so important because it provides a surface area for this liquid fuel to evaporate providing the fuel necessary to support combustion. Let's look at some of the other components that make this lighter work. Starting with where the fuel is added as well as the other components of the ignition system which are held underneath the screw which is much more serviceable than what we're going to find on a disposable butane lighter. Spring to apply pressure on the flint which is not technically flint it's a material called ferrocerium which can be a mixture of various metals typically including iron and a combination of some other rare earth elements usually including cerium, sometimes including neodymium, prasodymium and lanthanum. This tiny little piece here when encountered with the sharp wheel rotated by your finger or your thumb scrapes off some small bits of this metal which when exposed to the oxygen in the atmosphere spontaneously combust providing that flash to ignite the combustible gas surrounding the wick. Now that we've seen the inner workings of a zippo let's compare it to the Z plus 2. As you can see they look very similar to each other but when you open them up we can see that the Z plus 2 is actually a dual torch lighter with a visible fuel tank. We're going to focus on the bottom of the Z plus 2 where you can see the fill port and the flame adjustment. As you'll see the process of depressurizing and refueling a Z plus 2 is very similar to the process with a cyclone as well as most torch lighters. Use a pen and press it into the fuel port valve until you hear a hiss. If your tank is transparent you will see the fuel boil just like in the cyclone. Now when we take our fuel container put it on our fuel fill and press down it just simply flows. Finally we'll flick the bick and see what makes it tick. First we're going to remove the flame guard. We can see the valve actuator lever here now we're going to remove the striker wheel. The striker wheel is the component that shaves off a small amount of the ferrocerium which creates the ignition source as that material spontaneously ignites upon exposure to the atmospheric oxygen. Here's our flint, here's our spring and now we can see the lever a little bit more clearly and the lever has a pivot point in the plastic. The components of the bick lighter are much more simplistic than the torch lighters. The body including the fuel tank in the reservoir, the lever that actuates the valve, the valve itself, the spring for the lever for the valve, the ferrocerium which creates the spark when hit with the striker wheel, the spring to apply pressure to the ferrocerium, the child resistant component to protect the striker wheel from unauthorized usage and the flame guard. The question is can I put it back together? Putting the flint back in it's important to put the ground side up facing the wheel and this is probably the hardest part about reassembling the bick lighter and as you can see it's difficult and probably not worth your time or effort. I almost got it. So now that we know how bick lighter works, can we refill it? The bottom of the bick lighter shows the fill port filled in a factory but it is non-refillable because it has no metal components to allow for a valving mechanism. This is filled with specialized equipment that injects the butane and then seals the plastic to not allow it to leak back out. Rendering this style of lighter, very low cost but also disposable. In other words, there's no practical way to refill a bick lighter. That's another video. You're better off buying another one or a lighter that can be refilled. Nope, it doesn't work. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Exploring the Dinoverse. What's your favorite portable heat source? Leave it in the comments below. Thanks for watching this episode of Exploring the Dinoverse. Check out some of these other videos for more information on other cool things.