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Old 05-08-2011, 10:07 PM   #1 (permalink)
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cng heater

Does anyone know of a cng heater for ev use? I'd like to have something for the cab, and also for the battery enclosure since I live in a cold weather climate. I'd run duct work to divert/divide between the two. I want to stay away from anything propane, and think that water or elecric heat could be more load on a system than I'd want.

Thanks for comments

Don

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Old 05-08-2011, 10:10 PM   #2 (permalink)
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Private aircraft sometimes use propane or cng preheaters, but that's just for the engine compartment. Why not go electric?
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Old 05-08-2011, 10:32 PM   #3 (permalink)
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cng heater

My concern is battery load. I think all the accessories that need to be there for moitoring, things will add up pretty fast. If there were a mobile cng unit I could mount it behind the rear axle. My objection to propane is that it's crude based. Thank you for the comment.
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Old 05-08-2011, 10:35 PM   #4 (permalink)
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No- plug in electric, before you go.

Anyway, back in the VW microbussing days, I put a propane sunflower heater between the front seats for heat. But it didn't work all that well- I was warm enough but the thing still badly lacked decent windshield defrost.
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Old 05-08-2011, 11:28 PM   #5 (permalink)
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1. air is pretty inefficient At transferring heat
Try, instead, putting some heat wire elements in the seats. They can use less energy to keep you warm.

2. If you would rather use heat from cng, limit the area you're heating to only the spaces that you need to heat.
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Old 06-20-2011, 07:55 AM   #6 (permalink)
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We have people proposing use of gaseous fuels inside or venting to the cabin again... Bad Bad Bad Bad!!!! People die from this every year due to CO poisoning.

(end of 2nd paragraph)
http://www.utahcountyonline.org/Dept...Supplement.pdf

Charles E. Kanter, AMS

If your going to use gaseous fuel for heating do it through a heat exchanger of some sort.

Your better off using electric power. If you want efficient electric heating use some thermoelectric chillers to pump heat in from outside the vehicle to the inside of it. You'll get every watt you expend plus any heat they manage to pump.
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Old 06-20-2011, 04:44 PM   #7 (permalink)
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Where are you getting the compressed natural gas from? unless you have a home compressor or some other source then most people are not going to be able to have a device like this work so how are you making this work?
A gas heater like this needs to be vented to the out doors for two reasons, first one of course is so you do not suffocate your self and die from CO poisoning, 2nd reason is so you do not die because you can not see out your windows, the heat from a flame like this contains water vapor, so it will be like heating the inside of your car by filling it full of people, they all give off water vapor and steam up the windows.
I agree with using fuel to create heat, batteries tend to be charged with some sort of fuel so they have heat loss in every step up until you heat your vehicle with that fuel charged battery.
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Old 06-20-2011, 10:54 PM   #8 (permalink)
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The link at the bottom is the only cng heater for vehicle cab heating that I have seen. They don't have a us distributer, and when you try to get more info, you're ignored. There has to be another source.
As far as a cng source is concerned, there are filling stations in lots of places so I don't think that a fuel source is an issue.
I had always intended to find a unit with a heat exchanger. Poisonous air and moisture would both be discharged away from any person in the vehicle.
I don't think that I'm trying to reinvent the wheel. But I am trying to use as little crude as I can. It's expensive, and pollutes. Using any energy from the battery doesn't make sense to me if there is another way.

I do appreciate the coments and hope that they don't stop.

http://www.trumauk.com/images/librar...res/Trucks.pdf

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