Chinese Diesel Heater -Fuel used per hour. Simple set up and test. 

Your numbers look spot on except for the heater is not running at 5kw when at minimum output. Most of the 5kw heaters are rated around 1kw at the lowest setting. A closer number would be your max fuel consumption on high and use that to calculate your 5kw heat output.

I do similar draw down tests to determine chemical feed rates for my work. May I make a suggestion that will make this job easier? Fill your squeeze bottle to 200ml (or any mark above it 00ml). Then just measure the time it takes to remove the 100ml. This way you will avoid getting air in the lines and you won't have to do any multitasking at the end of the test.

Copper tube around the exhaust to a thermal bank(mass)/hot water situation. Self circulating like a wood stove "wet back" or a "donkey" could be possible. I was thinking gravity or offgrid situation for water or an enclosed system using oil(used and filtered) using a hot water tank etc. Love the conversation and thought processes.

The only flaw I see in your calculations was the conversion to watts. It's probably only 5KW when it's running flat out. It's going to be much less when it's running at the low rate. And you asked, so the test I want to see is electrical current draw in amps. And watts consumed at both rates and during warm up. I've been thinking about removing the propane furnace in my caravan and replacing it with one of these.

For anyone who wants to know gallon conversions it will run roughly 9 hrs on the high setting and 27 hrs on the low setting per gallon.

Just for the record: Webasto is German company. I'm not sure if they held the actual patent for these heaters, but it expired some years ago and the Chinese, contrary to their reputation, have been manufacturing them, quite legitimately, since then.

A couple of corrections from first few minutes of your video (from someone who services and repairs these CDH). Firstly, there is no injector in these heaters. Fuel is vapourised (not atonised) by a screen that is heated by the glow pin, the glow pin then ignites the fuel vapour. Once the flame is established, it will keep the screens hot enough to continue vapourising the fuel. Secondly, the fuel pump, in fact, has two one way (check) valves, one each at the inlet and outlet. Thirdly, the fuel pumps have a small amount of assembly lub from the factory, more than enough to keep the moving parts inside the pump lubricated during the prime cycle.

A liter of diesel has 9.7 kw/h of energy. So if your system would run on 100% efficiency ( which it doesn't because there's exhaust gas energy losses ) you would approximately use your liter price of diesel and divide it by 10 to have the conversion rate of diesel to kw/h price.

Your calculation isn’t correct, you are calculating the low output that isn’t 5kw but around 1,2 Kw! You must calculate with the 14 min. Instead of the 43 mins.

Reminds me of when I lived on my boat. 10 litre's (red) would last for about a week (£5-10) during winter.

I'm not sure you can devide the figure by 5 KW, the heaters are typically sold as 2kw to 5 KW heaters, given the thermal output is related to the volume of fuel burnt in a given period of time, burning less oil in same time frame can't = same heat output. I would suggest it's fair to assume 2kw output on the low setting and 5kw at the high settings. What do you think ? Cheers

Been usiing B20 bio diesel for months now in mine. Makes a cold van into a warm comfortable living space. Removes moisture and is waay better than propane portable heaters. Kept on low the power used for the unit is surprisingly low. Barely used 4 ah last night and less than an inch drop in fuel tank.

I have a comment on your calculation, you use how many fuel it uses on the lowes setting, then you devide by 5 KW, witch is the maximum power, it doesn't deliver 5 KW on low. But thanks for the nice and secure test you did, I am going to order one myself as well. Tanks for the video !

A couple of thoughts on your calculations. Firstly can you trust the Chinese 5kw rating? If it's anything like their lipo cells it's over stated, but not sure how it could be verified. Secondly your calcs are based on it running on the low setting, you should at least use the flat out 14 minutes/100ml for working out the 5kw/hr costs perhaps?

I would like to see a measurement of the actual heat delivered. Not the temperature, but the amount of actual heat output. In watts or BTUs per hour. One method of doing this would be to use a heat exchanger to move the heat into water. Measure the temperature rise of x quantity of water. Once you get the instrumentation/technique working, also measure the amount of heat wasted in the exhaust. Compare to the theoretical energy content of the fuel. So far, you have only measured actual consumption. To be meaningful, you also need to measure actual output.

13:13 you set minimum of pulse 1.7hz at 14:38 you are reading clock lol not pulses

Also, i've seen these units draw up to 13.5 amps during startup so i got some 20A wire.

I'm afraid you're too optimistic about the 5 KW of power you're using in your calculation. Only at full blast, your heater will deliver 5 KW, so you should use the numbers of the high run for this calculation. The dosing/metering pump delivers 0.02 ml per tick. If you have it set to 3 Hz (3 clicks per second), your heater uses 0.02 x 3 x 60 x 60 = 216 ml per hour. But the overall conclusion is correct, these things run dirt cheap. The question now becomes: Who will be the first one to ruin this for us?

Good Morning, one suggestion i would like to make is that you carried out the test as soon as you called for increased temperature. The yest needs to be completed over a longer period of time to allow for the heater to come up to temp and then regulate its self on and off as required to hold the temp. It will use more initially to get up to temp but then regulate to a more steady rate to maintain temp. Hope this helps

Very informative. I live in cold and rainy England. I have invested in two 8kw diesel heaters. One has just arrived, the next in January. I will install them each end of the house piped in from boxes. outside. Sick of the obscene cost of gas and electricity I am doing something. different. Hoping this will allow us to avoid gas and electric central heating altogether. I think installed well these will be proved viable...

Like you video thanks, one things for sure, looking at the comments below, there is much differing opinion on how these heaters run, happy with mine it works fine, I fill it up when I need too and that’s it.

Really enjoying your clever projects. Thanks for sharing it all with us.

I followed your calculations all the way to the bottom line. Where did you get the 5kW number from? Surely you don't believe the label on the heater. What I would do is measure the temp at the exhaust pipe and then at the hot air outlet. That'll give you a ratio, that gives you the efficiency of the heater. Then we know that one liter of diesel fuel has 10kWh of energy, ergo, easy to calculate the rest. Another nice experiment would be to create a small compartment, where the heater is installed with the exhaust pipe ending outside. Then run the heater until the air inside has risen a certain amount. Let the compartment cool down and run a 1000W electric fan heater and you'll get a pretty good number for the actual kW output from the diesel heater. Anyway, love your channel, and now liked and subbed.

I believe that to get the correct KWh rating you would have to use the higher consumption numbers as the heater only produces 5kw at it's highest setting for max heat. and you could not use the Alpine mode to do that calculation because at a leaner fuel mixture the heater will not put out the 5KW rating. You should be able to reverse the calculation of the KWh at full speed to calculate the KW output at the lower speed based off the fuel consumption. it would not be totally accurate as the KWh per ML fuel consumed will not be a straight linear curve but it would get you close for comparison. Great test and thanks for the information. pretty damn efficient units. I would like to see a test using one of the in line bulb fuel primers to do the initial priming so you would not have to run the pump dry while priming. leaving the bulb primer installed under normal operation to see if it would negatively effect operation. Thanks again.

Just looking at my tests on my 5 kw heater and my figures are consistently very close to yours. Mine gives 7 hours and 15 minutes per litre of Diesel fuel.

Thank you so much for your simple setup and clear test. All your calculations are fine except at low setting you were not running the heater at 5 KW but at 1.48 pulses so I think 5 pulses/1.48 pulses x 5 KW is the correct KW hour used! See if I am right. Thanks again.

Ridiculous cost figures. Your numbers are incorrect. These heaters don't produce anywhere near the heat output they claim. On your "low run" you used 100ml in 43 minutes, about 140ml per hour. Diesel fuel has a specific energy of about 38MJ/litre, so the fuel you used would have had about 5.32MJ of energy. 1MJ = 0.278kWh, so your 140ml of fuel would have the ability to generate 1.48kWh of heat - and that's if it was 100% efficient, which it won't be. So it's just wishful thinking to believe it was producing 5kW!

I probably shouldn't say anything but I'm testing aluminum turbo car intercoolers with a computer fan to see if I can reclaim some of that exhaust heat, besides getting the heat it also lowers the exhaust temperature in the piping going through walls

There are 138,000 BTU's per gallon of diesel fuel or 36,460 BTU/liter (138k/3.785). A liter therefore contains 10.7 kW (36460/3412) of energy. Therefore a liter should last arround 2 hours at full capacity of the 5 kW (17060 btu/hr) heater and it consumes slightly less. So? If the heater indeed is producing 5kW of energy and consuming 429 ml per hour, indeed it's more than 100% efficiency. Tony Weavers has postulated that it's a 4kW heater instead which makes all the sense. If Tony is correct, a wild hypothesis is that perhaps the heater actually only produces 4kW of heat, which is 13,648 BTUs per hour. It follow that it should consume 374 ml per hour and it consumes around 429 ml per hour at full open. On that basis the heater is around 87% efficient which is very common, perhaps slightly above average for a #2 fuel oil burning heater. If that heater can be operated for a couple thousand hours in the winter for a few years, it's a bargain. By the way, our oil furnace in our residence is 84% efficient and has been for over 30 years. Conclusion is that its likely, approximately a 4 kW heater, operates at over 85% fuel efficiency and would cost under one dollar and hour to heat a rather large interior space, perhaps 600 square feet or 56 square meters, 2.1 meters interior height in very cold weather.

I ordered an "all in one" 8Kw from Amazon and its shipping from the States which I am told will be delivered by mid January!! In the 2 weeks I spent contemplating purchasing one, the price pretty much doubled, and they have all but disappeared from stock! With energy prices going through the roof in the UK, the word is out on these diesel heaters. I'm interested to know what battery you used e.g. 60Ah? And how its holding up? One assumes you are keeping your battery on charge?

It doesn't mean anything if you know how much a Diesel heater is consuming within 1 hour or how long it runs with 1 L Diesel! So far we have only the assumption that it produces about 4 KW per hour (the Chinese claim 5 KW per hour...). Because there is roughly about 10 KW/h of energy in 1 Litre Diesel, this means this heater would only have an efficiency of 40 to 50% (!) Modern home oil-heating systems have an efficiency of about 95%. Even my 20 years old "MHG RE 1.26 Blue Burner" (Rocket-Burner) has an efficiency of about 90%. If you dive a little bit into the details of this Chinese diesel heater technology and a "real" oil-burner system for your house, you will pretty soon find out why there is such a big difference in the total efficiency... it's logical ;) With my RE 1.26 I get about 9 KW out of 1 litre Diesel. My burner takes about 2 litres per hour but it put out 17 to 18 KW of heat. (and I heat up 160 square meters at my house with it...) Sure, it will switch on multiple times per day, but usually it ran for 30 minutes... 6 hours in total per day, outside temperature 0 to -10 degrees Celsius. And by the way I have hot water for 3 people for "free". ;) Price for heating oil (red diesel) is currently 1.16 €/Litre where I live. Diesel fuel on the gasoline station about 1.95 € (!) All this videos on RU-vid about those famous Chinese Diesel heaters who claim that they will heat up your home very cheap, remind me a little bit on all those "free energy" and ""magnet motors" stuff... :) The 3 big main questions about this Chinese Diesel heaters are: 1. How much is the real efficiency? (how much will it heat up a room in a given time or with 1 litre of Diesel!) 2. What effect has the length of the exhaust pipe? (most of it inside the room, only the muffler on the outside or mounted directly to the wall, exhaust gases AND (waste)heat will go directly outside...) 3. What kind of innovative "secret alien technology" did the Chines use to separate all the micro particles and pollutants that will occure if Diesel get burned from the exhaust gases, which get dropped out 1 meter in front of your outside wall and could get sucked in again by the intake under bad circumstances ;) Remember, this is more or less an open-system... (!) So, how is the magic done? (my assumption is, that at least something goes INSIDE the your room again... for sure not very healthy with regular use... ;) So, a REAL test (probably the 1st and only one RU-vid) should look like that: 1. Get the temperature Delta of the room which is heated. (calculate the square metres, air volume of the room, starting temperature and end temperature. a) after 1 hour b) after 1 Litre Diesel consumption c) exhaust pipe should go straight outside (because we want to know what comes out on the heating side, not from the waste-heat side of the exhaust...) This is still not an exact result, because we don't know about the heat losses of the building / room... so in an other environment there could be probably totally different results! But it would give an idea which is much closer to the real heating capabilities of this machines. 2. Same test as above, but with most of the exhaust pipe inside the room, just the muffler end outside. 3. Measurement of the AIR QUALITY INSIDE the heated environment before AND after the usage of the heater! . When burning Diesel oil the result is that you will get some pollutants: a) hydrocarbons b) carbon monoxide c) nitrogen oxides d) fine dust particles uuuhh... damn... seems everyone forgot about that? You blow it outside and hope that everything of that stuff from above goes into the an other direction? Good luck! Diesel exhaust fumes can lead to respiratory diseases such as bronchitis or asthma, aggravate allergies and even encourage heart attacks. Together with other gases and air particles, nitrogen oxides combine to form particulate matter, which also increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes. When burning Diesel / Red Diesel in the heating system of your house, all the pollutants go through your chimney (at least 8 to 12 meters high!) and get mixed with fresh air, hopefully with some wind, which will bring that crap to someone else. But modern oil heating systems (and modern Diesel cars of course as well) have filters and catalysts to protect people and the planet... ;) Maybe I'm wrong, but I assume this Chinese Diesel heaters have them not. The big challenge on the this 3rd test is, that you will need an Air quality monitor (multi-)gauge, which can measure at least those 4 pollutants. Usually those gauges will cost about 300 to 400 €. (new) Of course people are free to use their lounges, heart and skin as gauge as well for long-term measurements. It's cheaper at the moment, costs no money, but probably just your health or life at the end. I'm pretty sure, you can't get our health or life back for small money from Ebay or Alibaba. But who knows, if "free energy" and "self spinning magnet engines" are possible... why not buying a piece of fresh health or a new life? Anyway, I really appreciate your efforts to make those videos on RU-vid! Exchange and discussion will help to bust some of the myths flying around these days. Thanks!!!

Im in the UK and i've had my heater 4 years now and always ran it on parrifin never had any problems 👍

i have a diesel heater running in my home, i very rarely use my gas central heating now and i run mine on 9 parts kerosene 1 part diesel just get the cost down ,i ran mine for the first time over night last night and it used about 1.5 -2 ltrs in about 14 hours on the lowest setting and the house stayed at 21-23oC and at todays UK kerosene price and diesel probably about £2 which isnt bad considering natural gas on a economy boiler like i have which is 2 years old its cost me about £0.60-£1.00 per hour to run the Gas boiler ... my property is perfect for this type of hot air heater as my downstairs is open plan with a open staircase to upstairs where all the heat rises , the heater is outside the only thing i need to change is the air intake is outside ' and i want to recirculate the air from inside the house so ill be warming warm air ... not cold air ... these things are amazing ...oh but carbon monoxide detectors are a must in my opinion .... thanks for the video and the info

As others have noted I think your numbers are off. your using the max rating for power but the fuel consumption for minimum power. However I would be using this as a supplemental heater (diesel is WAY to expensive to use as primary heat here !!!) $4 per gal and converting your numbers I need just under 27gal per month on the lowest settings. or $108 per month plus $4.80 in electricity to operate the heater. question is. how many BTU's is that ??? is it enough BTU's added to the home to justify the $113 cost. Will this make MORE or LESS heat than a 1.5kw electric heater which costs me $158 a month to run.

My small 2kw Chinese unit has done 2376 hours and used 141L of diesel according to my aftermarket controller. I have tuned it to run at about 50% of its standard lowest power.

I purchased a diesel heater for emergencies or maybe I will install it in my RV. My home has a natural gas furnace. I know a guy who lives in a old school bus who spends more on monthly heating cost than I do. He has 2 diesel heaters.

I do not understand the proclivity people have with fuel consumption when they are talking about heaters or Burners. The heat comes from burning the fuel so the question of home much fuel they use is irrelevant. The question should be how much heat do they produce? If you have a heater running, you set it by the temperature. You don't say I'm going to run this at 100Ml hr and sit there freezing your arse off. You crank the thing up to keep you warm and the thought of the fuel it's using is secondary and irrelevant. I think people are conditioned to think of things like cars where the questions is how many MPG. On a burner, Diesel, petrol, used veg and engine oil are all around 10 KWH per litre. As long as the things are burning clean, that's the gross heat output. These things are 80% efficient so you get 8 kwh Delivered for every litre of fuel burned. I ran one last winter and the 4 KWh was not nearly enough for my house and They would not burn waste oils very well so I built one that does about 40 KWH turned up. I know it's going to use 4L of oil an hour but who cares? I want a warm house not an economical heater that still leaves the place Chilly. The only thing wrong with the Running cost calculation is you based it on 5KWH. That's the Gross burn, as said, the efficiency is 80% so you need to work on 4Kwh delivered. that will up the price to about 8C per KWH delivered which is still good. I did the same calc a While back and found out the diesel heater was about 1/4 the price of running a resistive heater where I am here in Oz and fractionally better than LPG which was about 2C Kwh behind. Prices have gone nuts here with everything and that was back when fuel was much cheaper so electricity would be much closer now. That's another reason I built a waste oil heater, I can run the thing for free. These heaters are fantastic units and I want to take mine camping in the winter just for the luxury of staying warm in a tent. If it burns 50L over a couple of days , Meh! worth the comfort and the experience. For a house they can suck the fuel down, mine ran nearly flat out all the but It did keep the main room reasonably warm and would do well in a small place. One thing I did was to set the heater up outside and push the heated outside air in. Was beautiful. the place could be warm but never felt stuffy like the AC an make it. Set my waste burner up the same. Having warm fresh air coming is is so much nicer than recirculating the same stale air. The other advantage is if you have a place where drafts come in around doors and windows, having the outside air come in essentially pressurizes the place so all the leakage is going out, not coming in and feeling draft or Chilly. Worth it for that reason as well. :0)

Calculations are slightly out but not much, you have assumed the heater is giving the 5kW output as rated, on high you have used of 428ml per hour, this would give you a maximum input of 4.43kW. 1 litre of diesel has a value 10.35kW (value as quoted on average), so 1kW is 96.6ml. You will have combustion loses to vs the input, let's assume 5% losses, so realistically the output would be about 4.21kW. You can adjust how these are set up and probably get the 5kW output, however you really need to measure the combustion as you do it, or you could just go for trial and error, either way these are cheap to run in comparison to gas or electric at the moment. Not sure down there but in the UK we have Red Diesel which is a reduced tax rate so even cheaper, bought some yesterday and for me it works out to be £0.1043 per kWh, I've found these will run on a kerosene mix, however you need some diesel as the pumps require the lubrication, with that said I've not done a cost analysis of pump failure vs just using kerosene. Kerosene is the same calorific value as diesel too.

that was not the lowest setting the lowest would only illuminate 1 bar and then there is a lower setting they call it alpine low or something similar I have 2 of these one in my over the road tractor and the other heater my outbuilding workshop its a 12 x 30 and the heater will drive you out on high

The Chinese heaters are based on the Eberspacher D4 which, as I understand means these are 4kW rather than 5kW. So your KWH calc may be slightly off. Great video.

I've fitted one of these. In my house ! Best thing I've ever done.nice and warm cheap to run.

Interesting that everyone makes the same arithmetic errors.... If the heater only burns 430ml per hour and there is around 10kWh in one liter of diesel, then the heating, including losses, has an output of 3.5kW in the best case. Physics is really annoying sometimes 😅

i came up with 9 hours per 1 gallon of diesel for us Americans assuming you were to run it on High heat 27 hours on Low heat

A very precise and informative video. Many thanks my friend for taking the time to do that for us.

Assuning the high setting is correct at 5Kw then 100 mil was 14 minutes. The other run was a lower setting ( lower than 5KW ) so maybe it was 43 minutes at around 1.5 to 2 Kw ? But otherwise a lot of very helpful information, thank you.

You also have everything to verify the advertised 5kW rating: Diesel provides 43.1 MJ/kg (11.97 kW) when burned. At a density of 0.820 to 0.845 kg/L at 15°C, that's 14.2-14.6 kW/L. High run consumes fuel 3¼ times faster, so that's 4.6-4.75 kW/L, but all this energy does not get converted to heat. Still, pretty close to the advertised 5kW rating. But that's only for high run, not the low run in your computations. You never mention the capacity of the actual tank, it would be interesting to know how long this would run fully filled. These diesel space heaters come in 2, 3, 5 and even 8kW ratings and are very efficient indeed. They have a built-in radiator that transfers most of the heat from the exhaust into the room. A temperature sensor on both pipes (hot clean air and combustion exhaust) and the intake should provide interesting readings. Price is less of an issue if you can get agricultural "red" diesel that's taxed very little for farming equipment. In countries where diesel is taxed a lot, small scale biodiesel production from recycled frying oil might also be (a little) cheaper.

Also as stated the exhaust gets very hot , running the exhaust pipe through a water heat exchanger could give domestic hot water or some additional radiator heat

John from England fit it outside a shed or house withheater pipe on the inside noise outside heat inside all the best John

Run the exhaust through a heat exchanger to heat water or wrap a coil of copper pipe from a heat exchanger around. I'm in the UK and a 1930s home that is like heating a sieve, and I'm thinking what it may be like to have the heat come through the air brick, that surely is a cold air/damp collector, and the heat would rise through the floorboards. Thanks for the video, and I saw another one where he used red diesel that was cheaper, and another one that just put used engine oil in and it worked.

Just wondering how much battery power it uses. Great content , thanks.

its been tested by David Mcluckie the exhaust is waisting 800w . i run mine all winter 10-12 hours a day 1.5-2l per day of fuel . on around 2hz . for the last 3 years . it's been stout . btw the pump releases 0.022ml per shot. i also heat my shower water with mine 3-4 times a week . through a water to air turbo intercooler . works great . 25l of water from 10*c to 40*c in 35 mins at 3hz. food for thought . nice test thanks

A couple of questions. Do you have a link to the heater you used? Would the heater work on Kerosene. UK homes use kero. Kero is currently 84p per ltr Diesel is £1.58p per ltr

One thing I would like to see is an attempt to run the heater on biodiesel fuel, I have seen vegetable oil and other alternative fuels, but no one has tried biodiesel. Would like to see if there are any differences in performance.

Can you please tell us the type/brand of filter you used? I tried a small paper type that was supposed to be "universal" & compatible with the CDH but the pump could not draw the fuel thru it. I mounted it low between the tank and the pump thinking that gravity would assist in filling the filter basket but no joy there! Thanks for any help/suggestions.

Could you pass the exhaust through a water tank with a tube running through the centre to heat water at the same time ?

You just do the math on these heaters to find the fuel consumption at any give Hz rate. The pump always delivers .02ml every time it cycles, so at 5.7Hz it will use 410.4ml per hour, and at 1.28hz it will use 92.16ml per hour. But having said that, it's more fun watching a practical demonstration.

They are great units, i recently installed mine. I had to add a fuel filter, elbow joint on exhaust output and a hole in the other foot so that i could run exhaust and intake out in opposite directions, and also added a fuse to the ground line (there was only one on the positive and ideally you want one on each with DC). The pump doses at 0.02ml per cycle, so running at 1 Hertz wil give you 0.02ml per second, so you can calculate fuel use in this way also. Liked and subbed pal :)

In full power mode, it uses 428ml of fuel in one hour. That amount of diesel consists of 4,51kwh. So I recon you get about 4kwh of heat from the output pipe with roughly half a litre of diesel. Making the kWh price to 26 - 28 cents.

You can put your heater on Hz mode and use a formula to work out how much fuel is used, Formula is 0.022 X Hz X 60 X 60 = Ml per hour.

Thank you for this 🙏🙏 I always run my heater in my van at 1.6hz like 90% of the time so it’s nice to know what it consumes :)

If you want to use the exhaust heat, use an egr cooler plumbed to a small radiator.

No - You took your reading from the Low setting which is not 5 KW - you need to take the readings from the high setting - which uses a little over 3 times the fuel which brings your costs to 19cents a KW - tests by others show these heaters produce 4.3 kw not 5 which increase costs more to 22cents per Kw - Russian posts have shown that by running the hot exhaust through an old cast radiator you can get up to 1.5kw at full power though it has to be positioned all down hill as it condenses the gasses and drips acrid water.

You ARE wrong, the 5kw rating is the maximum output therefore surly you need to calculate from the 14 min figures. Not to say you would run at full 5kw all the time, especially if you are in temp control mode but none the less you need to consider that. I.e full 5kw power is 2hr 20 min per litre still very interesting and definitely worth looking into to heat a small space or in an emergency.

I put a heater core on the end of exshaust with a mini fan then ran 2nd pipe outside. great reclaimer.

A litre of diesel contains ~10.7kWh of energy if you burn a litre over 7.16 hours your input is 1.49kW/h, output will be considerably less due to exhaust losses.

Since you asked: You're wrong in your cost calculation - The heater won't be producing 5kW on low (it's moot whether it will on high!) - burning 1 litre of diesel produces ~10kWh of energy. The efficiency will be ~70% max (check out the quoted heat output & consumption for Eberspachers - best efficiency is 69%) making the cost per kWh ~$0.33 (at $2.28/l). Your low power diesel consumption is ~0.14 litres / hour, so you're getting ~1.1kW of heat.

About the heat lost from the exhaust pipe, I was thinking about covering the steel exhaust pipe with finned heat sinks, enclose all of this in a box with a fan forced air in and out and maybe you could save some extra warm air. Also I have heard in other videos that running these on LOW for an extended period of time is detrimental to the unit- maybe you could do some research and experimenting into this idea. Gasoline and diesel vehicles can be converted to propane (which has an INDEFINATE STORAGE LIFE!) do you think one of these heaters could also be converted to propane? Good video, look forward to the next, Tom from USA. 😁😁😁😁

The price of diesel in the UK, makes theses heater's redundant.

Saw an interesting video today where a guy coupled the exhaust through an EGR cooler and ran water to/from a hot water tank for RV use I guess. Your calcs are wrong by the way. The original German device was a 4kw heater (so that's 5 chinese kw) but that would be at full power. It is not delivering 5kw or anything near it at the lowest setting. Sorry.

Try it on black diesel cheers Graham

Great video thanks for sharing I have subscribed and welcome more of your experiments we already have one in our cabin but yours is running much better .I will have to see where I have been going wrong ?? Maybe in my set up .cheers keith

You get 5 kWh at max power not at the lowest setting! And one liter of diesel has approx 9.7 kwh heat capacity!

low run is not 5 kw but 0,5kw

biodiesel (cheap re-purposed cooking oil!), comes to mind as a possible test fuel. But I think that the 5kWatt rating is the max rating of the heater, so your skinny settings are way under 5kw actual output

Its misscalculation. Correct calculation 0.1 l /14 min *60 min=0,42 l/hour 0,42 l/hour*$2.28 = 0,96 $/hour 0,96 $/hour / 5kW = 0,19 $/kWhour because 5kW power is rated at maximum run ! But still cost efective. In Slovenia heating diesel price is 1,1 €/l so it would be 0,09 €/kWh vs electicity wich is around 0,25 €/kWh (with all taxes and fees incl,)

Suppose effective output on high is 4kW. (My reference here is Autotherm or Planar advertised as 4kW. ) 4,2 x 14 minutes = 60 hour 4,2 x 100ml = 0,42 liter per hour 0,42 liter x 1,70 Euro/liter = 0,714 Euro per hour on high. ( Diesel december 2022 in the Netherlands) Thats 0,714 Euro for 4 kWh. Thats 0,178 Euro per 1 kWh. Cheaper then electric !! But do keep spares at hand if you value comfort. Edit: Planar 44D => 4kW consumes 0,514 liter on high according specifications manufacturer. With 0,218 Euro / kWh thats still cheaper then electric.

Its 14min x 10 = 2.32 hours - 2.28nzc / 2.32 = 98nzc / 5 = 20nzc per KWH surely? Or in UK money with Diesel at approx 35% above NZ prices = 27nzc per KWH - converted to GPB = 15p per KWH in the UK. A considerable saving over electricity currently at 35ukp per KWH and rising. Or show me where i'm wrong.

So, you think thats efficient. Now mount one in a Roof Top Tent, run it on its lowest setting converting -5°C ambient air to +28°C utilising a 2.5l fuel tank. It runs so efficiently heating such a small area. Seems to run forever on 2.5lts. Love it, no such thing as winter when we camp out. Wife was totally unaware I had it running, (yes it's quiet) she climbs the ladder into the RTT whinging how cold she was, unzipps the access door to find a really warm sleeping compartment. Now fellas, that how you score brownie points, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, say no more. Haha 😊 The one in our caravan has the same effect, know what I mean, know what I mean. 😆 There's a 15L tank on it, lasts over a month with regular use. Bloody awesome units & just keep getting cheaper to buy each season, son just got one for his caravan, unbelievable at $99. I paid $350 approx for first one, then $178 each for a bulk buy of 10, i thought that was good, now the son gets his single unit for $99, unbelievable.

Sorry, but you are wrong. You probably figured it out by yourself by now. The 5KW is the maximum output of the heater, at the maximum fuel rate (the maximum consumption). So you should divide the 2.28 nzd by 140 minutes (2.33 hr) and then the result would be 98 cents/hr. In fact, 1 liter of diesel holds about 10 kwh of energy. So if you could burn it with 100% efficiency (but you can't), the heat from 1L of diesel would cost you 2.28 NZD. It actually costs you way more, because any burning will output hot exhaust gasses, which are lost energy. I would say, this thing is about 80% efficient, which means the energy costs you 2.73 NZD/10 kwh or 27.3 cents/kwh.

This figures means that the Chinese lies.1Ldiesel contains approx. 10kWh energy.If the burner gave out 5 kWit must use at least 500mldiesel/h with 100% effiency.100mlat14minutes gives about 4,3 kw.Then subtract exhaust losses and you get around 3,5-4 kw max.Still cheap heat.(and the 8kw burner gives exactly . The same result.)

At the low setting it gives out about 1 kw.Makes price a little bit higher.Diesel can never produce more energy than about 10 kw per liter per hour.(10kWh per liter max)

WRONG!!! Running on low, does NOT give you 5KW. Therefore your calc is wrong. You have to use full throttle. And then again is it REALLY 5KW??? Companies usually lie a great deal about the specs. I remember (many) years ago, a (danish) company got wacked, becouse they used specs for their freezers measured at a room-temp of 0 degrees celcius. Are China better or worse? EDIT: Read a bunch of the comments. You're taking a lot of heat ;) for this mistake.

How much Space will that Heat in a Fairly Well Insulted Space.. In Gallons añd Sq. FT. at 72° Fahrenheit. The Imperial System is Still ABSOLUTELY Used in the U.S... If you Smell Diésel how is it Exhausted out of the Space??

hello Team1 Great video! Soo... for 25oc at half speed (my settings are from 1-8) half being 'L4' what how long do i get per litre?... cheers guys! 🏁

Burning 1 liter of diesel at 100% efficiency provides 34,201 BTU or 10,023 Watts or 10KW. So, on low 10KW divided by 7.1 hours = 1.4KW per hour of heat at 100% efficiency. Note that the electrical energy used should be accounted for in any cost per hour calculation. Using the same math on high the 2.33Hr run into the 10KW would suggest the heat output to be 4.29KW per hour. The actual heater efficiency and output is much lower when you consider all the heat exiting thru the exhaust is lost. Try making a simple oven and slow cooking a big piece of meat!

On high at 5kW the heater ran 14 minutes and used 100ml so it will run for 140 minutes on 1 litre. Making 1 litre every 2.33 hours. Reversing that means you are burning 0.43 litres per hour to make 5 kW per hour hence 5/0.43 gives 11.63 kW per litre. Note there are 10.96 Kw in a litre of diesel at 100% efficiency so this heater is 106% efficient!! The truth is that this type of heater is around 60% efficient so all you show with your experiment is that it cannot produce anywhere near 5kW.

Diesel produces 10.2KWhrs of energy per liter .This cannot change (law of physics) . So low run 100ml in 43mins means about 1.5Kw is the total heat output , the question is how much is wasted (in exaust gas) . If very lucky you might have 1Kw of useful heat (0.5KW wasted) and that costs about 38cents per hour . so cost is 38cents/KWhr. The best solution is to have a diesel generator , the electricity produced can be fed to grid and will normally pay for the cost of the diesel . But the generator is only 30% efficient , so 70% of energy from fuel is heat and if you can harvest this heat it's FREE !

I have a box trailer which was converted to a camper. I'm amazed anyone would run propane "Mr. Buddy" heaters.....they're dangerous (carbon monoxide) and produce "wet" heat....foggy windows, damp clothes...everything bad. These chinese diesel heaters cost almost nothing to run and produce "dry" heat....a real no-brainer.

100ml per 14 minute (at max setting) = 140 minutes per liter. 2,33 hours of run time per liter at 5kWh gives 11,6kW of power which gives a cost per kWh of £0.19??

Never heard so much Hot Air in my life, There is no actual fuel injector inside the heater it is just a pipe adding fuel to a tiny metal screen to atomise the fuel, the pump doesnt even produce any pressure it just pushes the fuel along in fact it has even been prooven that you can use a medical drip to feed the fuel into the heater just using gravity. this is an over complicated explanation of how these things work, they are very simple to own and maintain just as long as you dont mess to much with the settings as they can produce quite a bit of carbon monoxide and black smoke, they are factory set on arrival to keep these emissions down. Ive been running them successfully for years now on kerosene because here in the UK its a lot cheaper than red diesel which is permitted for home heating use.

if this is a 5kw heater them at 14mins per 100ml and 43 mins at low its 0.325 the fuel used, so around 0.325x5kw or 1.6kw on low. like you i'm around 2 beer tokens per litre of diesel so 0.30 tokens an hour, which currently is what i pay for 1kw hour of electricty, so 1.6kw of electrical heat would be 0.48, so it is cheaper to run than my current grid supply. add in the fact you may be able to burn other fuels in this, it is a good current option

I an afraid U are wrong.. If U want to find out the energy cost at 5 kw, u have to run it at high setting. At low setting, it may be as low as 1kw…. A little calculation, 5kw @ 5,7 ppm at pump, gives 1,14 ppm @1 kw. Low setting gives 1,28 ppm, and a little over 1,1 kw. This again gives 32 cents divided by 1,1 kw and 29,1 cents pr kw…

Your calculations are wrong - you need to take into account the effect of the heater, the power used by the fan, glowplug and pump, so sorry but you are skipping a couple of steps - you need to calculate the efficiency of the heater first. Now for thermal energy: if we assume that the heater puts out 5 kW of heat on makes settings and it burns 100 mills in roughly 14 minutes, let's say that the fan is using 28 watts per hour. Now one litre of diesel holds approx 10,7 kWh of energy - doing your example it burns 60/14*0,1 = 0,429 litres per hour the energy used is then 10,7*0,429 = 4,5903 kWh per hour of course if we assume that New Zeland diesel holds 10 kWh per litre the 5 kW effekt assuming 100% efficiency is spot on. But as you said the heater is wasting a lot of heat through the exhaust pipe, so not 100% efficient

Your completely off, there's only approx 10kWh in a liter of diesel.... the heater is not even close to putting out 5kW from your numbers its only puting out 1,39kW minus the heat lost in the exhaust gas. If ALL energy from the diesel used 100% efficient the price per kWh is 22,8cent

So, how many BTUs/hour? How many BTUs / Litre. Or KWH / litre is you prefer. Then you can compare the Chinese versions with the proper ones. They may be better, but I'm betting they're not better in KWH/Litre while being cheaper to buy. Chinese manufacturers simply copy western products - when they are competing with them - and cost reduce them, which rarely if ever improves quality.

Each liter of diesel releases about 10kWh of heat energy when burnt. There is no magic involved. 150ml/h means 1.5kW. The 5kW is mostly some marketing number. What you actually get you can calculate from the consumption.... Given that your burn is complete and you have no smoke. Efficiency comes from the amount of exhaust (wasted heat) vs hot air (useful heat)

Nice review is that the 5kw or the 8kw and would be cool to know the cfm output of the fan

5kw is what the heater gives at max output, and you are combining that with the fuel effciency of low output. You take the two best numbers from this heater, in two different modes. And combine it too a mess of a equation :P More likely you are looking at 32 cents per kw/h. After all physics tell us diesel has about 10 kw/h of energy in it per liter. Some of that you lose in the exhaust ofc, you can build a heat exchanger to minimize exhaust losses. But you will never be 100% efficient. If you were 100% efficient, you would pay about 22.8 cents per kw/h with your fuel prices, but you are more likely at 32 cents per kilowatt hour due to the exhaust losses. Thats about a 40% loss of energy, certainly can be improved quite abit with a heat exchanger on the exhaust. If your equation were correct. You would make more energy than was input :P

At the end you just accept that the heater is 5KW - based on what? A Chinese manufacturer's claim? Seriously, even Europeans know not to believe claims from Chinese Manufacturers. I'd imagine that Australians were even more aware. As for operating costs.. what's the cost of buying and installing these, amortized over the running hours /per year, divided by number of years of expected service. One assumes that the power consumption of the unit is negligible?

Hey I don’t think you understand how the control system works !!! Not fuzzy logic, it’s called PID control. Process, integral, derivative. The set point temperature is achieved via an integral ( which is the gradient of a curve) giving the derivative pump and fan speeds. Fuzzy logic uses a far more sophisticated system which remembers and learns, and applies that learnt data.