Chinese Diesel Heaters (11 Viewers)

[Speedytriple]

Hi all,

My van has one of these Chinese diesel heaters in it. I didint fit it it was installed already when i bought the van.

From what i was told it tee's into somewhere near the fuel rail on the van.

I've read they operate at a more constant temp if run in Hz mode, but can someone tell me good initial Hz settings for somewhere around 20 degrees Celsius. I guess this is dependant upon your climate etc, but we live in the UK where we rarely have extremes.

Also roughly how much diesel do they use? Again i guess there are a lot of factors effecting this but we are total newbs to all this so i dont know if its a litre per night or a gallon or an egg up.

Thanks in advance

 

[Two on Tour]

Hi all,

My van has one of these Chinese diesel heaters in it. I didint fit it it was installed already when i bought the van.

From what i was told it tee's into somewhere near the fuel rail on the van.

I've read they operate at a more constant temp if run in Hz mode, but can someone tell me good initial Hz settings for somewhere around 20 degrees Celsius. I guess this is dependant upon your climate etc, but we live in the UK where we rarely have extremes.

Also roughly how much diesel do they use? Again i guess there are a lot of factors effecting this but we are total newbs to all this so i dont know if its a litre per night or a gallon or an egg up.

Thanks in advance

It really is a suck it and see as to the Hz rate you will need to maintain around 20c in your van plus it's very likely that you will need to adjust the Hz up and down for the 20c to remain a constant, but as a rough guide, it's about 1.6 Hz on our van and we have a 5kw diesel heater.

Hz is the rate at which the fuel dosing pump pumps at.
Hertz is the internationally recognised system of measuring frequency (rate/speed) and one Hz is one event (cycle) per second, two Hz two events per second and so on.
These are the same Hz that radio frequencies are measured in.

The heater fuel pumps are a solenoid and each time 12v is applied to the pump, the pump pushes a fixed amount of fuel which is normally 22ml.
The 12v to the pump is switched on and off which makes the pump pulse to pump fuel and the frequency (rate/speed) at which the pump pulses is measured in Hz.
The rate at which the fuel is delivered to the heater governs the heat it will produce, and some diesel heaters use the pump Hz rate to indicate this while others just use a number scale as with yours.

At one Hz the heater will use 0.0792 Ltrs per hour and at two Hz it will use 0.1584 Ltrs per hour and at five Hz it will use 0.396 Ltrs per hour and so on.

 

[fishplug]

Temperature mode will fire the heater up on full until it hits the target and then it drops down to minimum until the temperature drops sufficiently to fire it up on full power again - and so the loop continues.

Hz mode keeps the output at a steady rate but the best way of knowing what that is for you and your van is going to be trial and error.

I'd personally start lower and give it half an hour and see what the temperature difference is, then increase it a bit.

Oh, just seen Two on Tour's excellent answer which pretty much covers what I was going to say next so....

The only thing I'll add is that in Hz mode your fuel consumption should be something around:

dose rate x 60 (seconds) x 60 (mins) = mililitres per hour

It's worth sticking these on full power for a while (half an hour or so) from time to time in order to burn off any deposits. They gunk up on tickover and they're a pain to disassemble and clean. Ask me how I know....

 

[Two on Tour]

Hi fishplug

I use a controller on my Chinese diesel heaters designed and made by an Australian guy called an Afterburner.
The Afterburner controller offers a great many ways of controlling and monitoring my Chinese diesel heater, either directly by the controller or via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi or internet.
The thermostat modes include running at fixed Hz, headband, stop start and linear Hz which I normally run ours on with hysteresis figure window of 1.25 degrees plus or minus of my desired temperature in conjunction with an upper and lower pump Hz setting of your choosing so the heater does not need to keep stopping and starting to save battery drainage with the glow plugs high amperage.
You can individually set both the upper and lower pump and fan speeds to tune your heater to burn more efficiently, as well as have another four alternative fuel settings you can configure to implement if, for instance, you travel to altitude for skiing maybe.
You have a Frost Mode option, 14 day/timer setting available.
Furthermore, you also can add an additional three DS18B20 temperature sensors to the system.
The controller will also measure the fuel used and the rate of fuel usage in real-time as well as user-set low fuel warning.
Ray the designer is constantly improving and updating the controller's firmware at no additional cost.

The mobile interface on my phone.

Screen grabs from my PC. These are the same as will be displayed on the mobile interface.

 

[Speedytriple]

Thats excellent.

Thank you so much for the replies guys.

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[fishplug]

Interesting Two on Tour - I first saw the Afterburner on David McLuckie's YouTube channel but it seems like it's come on leaps and bounds since then.

I've actually got one of James Browning-Smith's truly silent pumps so I'm not sure if it would be compatible with the Afterburner. Might be worthy of some additional research.

That comes with a knob so you can manually adjust the fuel flow rate and I simply measure the exhaust gas with a CO meter and tweak as required when at altitude.

 

[Two on Tour]

Interesting Two on Tour - I first saw the Afterburner on David McLuckie's YouTube channel but it seems like it's come on leaps and bounds since then.

I've actually got one of James Browning-Smith's truly silent pumps so I'm not sure if it would be compatible with the Afterburner. Might be worthy of some additional research.

That comes with a knob so you can manually adjust the fuel flow rate and I simply measure the exhaust gas with a CO meter and tweak as required when at altitude.

I've been using Afterburners for 5 or 6 years now, and once you have used one, you will realise that there is no way you would want to use a standard Chinese controller ever again.

I tried one of James's silent stepper motor pumps in its early form and through some of its upgrades, but with the position of my Lavaner Pro install, I could not stop James's pump from flooding my heater with fuel when it was not running including after solenoid shut off valve upgrade, so I sold it on to another Funster and went back to a standard solenoid dosing pump in a home brew neoprene foam cover.
The silent pump is compatible with the Afterburner as the Afterburner controls the pump by 12v pulse as does the standard Chinese controllers.