Fast warm up ideas: 5,500 watt, 19,000 BTU per hour coolant heater
 

The last post http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...mer-23893.html

My old coolant heaters were just screwed together steel water pipe with a hot water heater element.
The 5,500 watt heater element needs a 2 inch pipe and reducer bushing upon reducer bushing to bring 2 inch down to a useable 3/4 to 1 inch NPT, which makes the pipe section really bulky and heavy.

I am trading out the heavy iron parts for a length of 2''ID .065'' wall 316 steam pipe and 1.5 inch 304 stainless steel fittings.
I found that 2 inch pipe is almost too small for the doubled over heating element. The heating element also touches the sides of the enclosure with 1.5 inch pipe a lot. The steam pipe is part of a 15 foot section, still needs to be cut.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...9&d=1438743483

The ports on this will be 1''NPT and 3/4''NPT, which is perfect for the 5/8''ID heater hose inlet and 3/4''ID heater hose outlet.

This coolant warmer will be powered externally by high voltage 240 volt AC.

To install 240v power at your drive way can cost $50 to $100 in materials depending how close a main or sub panel is to your drive way if you can do it your self.
I already have drive way 240v power for powering my welder and plasma cutter.
To get 240v power installed at the drive way I have herd of it costing as much as $500 for an electrician to run a wire and install a plug if that is all that you need. It can cost up to a few thousand if all of your electrical is out of date and has to be redone.

Here is the coolant heater tack welded together. I left my argon purge kit at work or it would be done.
The inside of the coolant heater will be purged with argon to get the best weld.
Then after its welded I was going to hydrostatic test it to about 100psi.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1439092498

Subscribed. My commute route means that I don't have heat for most of the drive since it is mostly downhill when I need heat and uphill when I don't need heat.

Here are the pics of the work.
My gas purge rig just bushings and 1/4 inch hose barbs. I set the maxstar to 70 amps, used less than 1cm of 316L 3/32 filler rod for each weld, electrode is a 1/16'' 2% thoriated tungsten.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1439168575

The hydro test had no leaks.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1439168575


This winter I will be leaving to work well before sun up.

Looks purdy. I assume you're going to use an electric water pump with it to circulate the coolant.

It could thermo syphon?

regards
mech

Its going to mounted pretty high up in the coolant system its going to be force circulated though the heater loop with my diesel's electric coolant pump.
At this power level I wouldn't try to thermo syphon it. Now if it were mounted differently and if this element was powered off 120 volt power maybe.
I will still have the the 2 passive/ traditional 600 watt block heaters installed.

Very nice. Can't wait to see how it works out. Gonna post data on how fast it warms up?

My guess is the test will look something like this:

That test was 3500 watts with out the heater fan going.
This test was also on a fairly mild day that was right about freezing. This winter it could be starting out at 0'F and would take about 15 minutes just to get the engine to where it was freezing.
My guess is it will warm up about 60% faster, if I repeat the test as I did before, but I want to use that heat for other stuff besides just warming the engine up some.
The 5500 watt element is so big because I want to be able to defrost the wind shield, possibly start to warm the contents of the diesel fuel tank and maybe run a second cab heater.

A closer picture of one of the welds.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1439264293

Why did you decide to go with SS?

Nice work!!!

I went with stainless steel for a few reasons.
1 Already had some of it on hand, I bought about 40 feet of used 2 inch 316SS steam pipe for exhaust pipe projects.
2 Stainless is very weldable.
3 The pipe fittings were only marginally more expensive than steel or iron fittings plus bushings I would have needed to make it work from lowes.
4 Getting the pipe fittings off ebay I could get them in the size I need, eliminating the need for bushings.
5 It looks cool.

Here is what it looks like when you try to use 2 inch fittings all around.
I only mocked it up and thought, mmmmm No.
Big, ugly, heavy and all around looks poorly done.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1439682489

Can you use copper parts to? Or would it corrode to fast?

Copper would be fine but the 2 inch fittings needed would be very expensive.

I aint need it any more, just orded a 3 glow plug heater :)

http://i1143.photobucket.com/albums/...t%20heater.jpg

I am used to glow plugs like that only using about 10 amps each.
Those draw 20 amps each?
Just remember the alternator likely puts out less than 30 amps at lower engine speed. The alternator needs to get spinning upward of 6,000rpm any where near its rated output.

Also, powering heating up your engine with alternator power really isn't a great way to gain efficiency.

Ive got an (80)150amps alternator. So probably putting out 80 amps at idle.

I just dont have the ability to plug in with an extension cord.

So i aim forces to use this.

Alternator put is not linier. I have a 130 amp and if the idle is set too low the alt wont charge the batteries with the head lights on.
Only way to know for sure is put a DC amp clamp on it and turn everything on.

Anytime a person uses an alternator or generator to heat the whole engine it'll actually be heating several times faster due to the fuel burning than due to the electrical energy. Consider, the ICE is usually less than 20% efficient. Maybe as much as 40% but not usually. All that loss of energy is heat. Even if you had a huge 60,000 watt alternator (5000 amps) hooked up to a 60,000 watt block heater and ran that you would be creating about 240,000 watts of heat in the combustion process.

Engine Heater
 

My kid brother lived on a small farm where he could not get the rig close to the buildings or a power source, and letting the truck idle all weekend when he was home in the winter got pretty expensive so we put in an RV water heater, run off Propane. It would pre-heat the engine and defrost the cab in a couple hours from dead cold, and keep the bunk comfy and the engine ready to start when he bunked in cold weather. We had a 24 volt circulator pump set up running off 12 volts and a couple of computer fans moving air over the added heater core in the bunk. Worked great.

I have the coolant heater installed just not hooked up.
The stainless 5/8'' barb to 1 inch NPT came in saturday and the 3/4'' barb to 3/4" NPT should be here Monday.
Going to put a dryer cord on it for testing.
Later on I would like to hard wire it in with 10/2 UVB romex.

Yep it works
 

It was about 85'F to 90'F going in and 109'F going out.

Its wired up on 12/3 SJ cable with a modular NEMA 10-30 plug head.
The 12 gauge wire is slightly above its limit with this amount of current. Its not going to be ran for more than 20 minutes at a time and in very cold temperature.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1445653704

Wow, 20F temp rise through it, that is impressive. I love the idea.

By comparison the 2400 watt heater only warmed the coolant 12'F per pass.

This one I am thinking turn the key to on (not starting the engine) that will get the electric coolant pump going, turn the heater to "defrost" and instantly start to defrost the wind shield and heat the engine some with out running the engine.

Most mornings here a 20'F to 25'F increase in coolant temperature going to the heater core should be enough to start melting frost almost instantly.

Then if its cold, and not frosty, just leave the heater off and send all the heat to the engine block

Great idea, however the feasibility of a 5.5KW supply is at least doubtful in most places.

I have a similar setup using a 3phase heater, so heat settings can be changed as needed by turning individual (3) elements on and off. Say 2, 4 and 6KW.

The heater can be directly attached to a 1.5" NTP adapter and has a screw in type option for the electrical contact cover.

http://i63.tinypic.com/wam2p3.jpg

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2719475258...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

You can use a Diesel heater such as the one above, with a rated output power of 5KW. I had the glow plug setup on my older diesel and found it useless at other than killing engine torque at low revs. (It only heats up faster because of how much more fuel you have to burn given the engine inefficiency, which increases cold engine wear too) The car looked pretty stiff before the turbo kicked in because of the extra load.

In my 1985 VW non-turbo diesel Golf, if the glow plugs work I can start the engine as low as 0°F (-18°C). But without them, I can't get it to start at temps as high as 50°F (10°C). The beauty of a glow plug is that it puts the heat right where you need it. So it takes less heat to do the same thing.

What you are describing sounds like an intake manifold grid heater, not a glow plug system. I've ran plenty of diesel powered vehicles with those grid heaters and they don't seem to do anything but put a strain on the electrical system and cause severe burns to your hand if you put it anywhere near the intake manifold. I think that when you turn over the engine there's not enough heat transfer to the air, so air rushes through the intake manifold and doesn't really heat up all that much. And by the time the fuel is injected into the air it's cold again and won't start.

For the record, if you wait for the thing to stop heating (I use an voltmeter and wait for it to go back up to 12V) and then try starting it it will crank over just fine. But if you try to start it while the thing is still heating it won't want to start because of the extra load. We had three high capacity batteries per Bus and with the intake grid heater on it would drop the voltage of all three batteries to around 9V or less!

With glow plugs, however, you can start the engine just fine with them on since they don't use near as much juice.

You're talking about a different thing. Glow plugs inside the engine heat the combustion changer before the engine is cracked to first warm up the combistion chanber enough for the diesel to burn on startup. Some models leave them on for a few seconds to help combustion while the engine is cold, which is fine.

This is completely different from a glowplug used to heat up the coolant, which might stay on for a couple of minutes.

The intake ones are yet a different system. I remember them in very ancient direct injection Japanese systems. They're not as efficient, but a direct injection engine can start unaided at much lower temperatures. I can't recall any modern engine with them.

I wondered why you went from coolant heating to glow plugs. It would seem to me they should of thought of a better name. That's quite confusing.

As far as the intake grid heaters go, most new large international diesels have them. Freightliner too. Probably a few other large commercial vehicle diesel engines.

Multi KW high voltage coolant heaters, two plain block heaters, glow plugs, intake heaters. I have them all.
OEM configuration had glow plugs and a single block heater. Insufficient for my hatred of winter.

For years cummins used intake heater grid only.
I know the 12 valve P-pump 5.9L cummins would fire a cold engine down to about 25'F with no intake heating as long as you had a strong battery.

Always leaning :) Haven't seen one in a while here!

The glow plug name is because someone had the idea to use the glow-plugs (same as used on the engine head) to heat up the coolant. More expensive models typically use a PTC element on the heater matrix, electrically operated, which helps to warm up the cabin while the coolant is cold:

http://tutoriale-auto.ro/wp-content/...806.jpg?739a0d

Adaugare PTC (Auxiliary Heater) - VW Golf, Jetta, Caddy,Touran

And here is the glowplug version (check the first images)

ALH engine timing belt replacement VW Jetta TDI Golf Beetle 1998-2003: part 1/3 | VW TDI forum, Audi, Porsche, and Chevy Cruze diesel forum

These can be retrofitted into other vehicles or as a inline heater for the WVO folks.

http://www.vorwerkauto.com/media/cat...21_145_b_1.jpg

http://i1143.photobucket.com/albums/...t%20heater.jpg

basically it heats up the coolant (and creates additional engine load via the alternator) as it passes trough.

I personally just plug in a 1,600W block heater for a couple hours.

I have been using the block heater some now that the mornings are getting frosty.
Unfortunately I do not have the instant defrost that I wanted for 2 reasons.
The electric coolant pump circulates the coolant through the element too fast and with the engine off the vent controls have no vacuum to actuate the fan selector so the default mode blows all the air out the floor vents.
But even after only 10 minutes the engine is nice and warm.
If the blower air would go to the defrost vents the heater would only need to be on for maybe 5 minutes before it would start to melt frost.

The heater element draws 23.8 amps.

Cool!

Get a small vacuum pump and switch?

Can you put a rheostat or pulse width modulator on the pump and slow it down?

Also, for vacuum all you may need is a vacuum reservoir with a manual valve and a check valve. You may not even need the manual valve if your system isn't leaky.

Why slow down the rate of power flow?
If anything its not enough.

Eventually I will have an electric vacuum pump.