A comprehensive tutorial on room (space) heater technology and their effectiveness and efficiency in heating rooms and homes.
The different types of heat transfer are discussed, along with the different types of heater technology available and how they apply to room and object heating. The 2nd law of thermodynamics, and the impossibility of new graphene technology in the Solus Kickstarter project.
Infrared panel heaters, Infrared IR radiation heaters, and convection heaters. The BTU and power equivalence is explained. And a demo of thermal heat through glass.
Solus video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnM4UcSDDpk
Forum: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-1187-room-heater-technology-explained/'>http://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-1187-room-heater-technology-explained/
#Graphene #Heating #Thermodynamics
Bitcoin Donations: 38y7DE8HEHNj8fGDtUr4PkCn9nWxiorvvy
Litecoin: ML7oQokTwB38bgzzjLDbRV97HKAHuwRfHA
Ethereum: 0x11AceA38DCA9DbFfB4F35f3F746af65F9dED28ce
EEVblog Main Web Site: http://www.eevblog.com
The 2nd EEVblog Channel: http://www.youtube.com/EEVblog2
Support the EEVblog through Patreon!
http://www.patreon.com/eevblog
AliExpress Affiliate: http://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/c2LRpe8g
Buy anything through that link and Dave gets a commission at no cost to you.
Stuff I recommend:
https://kit.com/EEVblog/
Donate With Bitcoin & Other Crypto Currencies!
https://www.eevblog.com/crypto-currency/
T-Shirts: http://teespring.com/stores/eevblog
Likecoin – Coins for Likes: https://likecoin.pro/ @eevblog/dil9/hcq3

Hi I Thought we'd take a look at space or room heating. If you've got a heater in a room like this, how do you effectively heat up the temperature of this room or heat objects like people or other things inside the room and do it effectively and efficiently? Let's take a look at it because there's lots of scams and ridiculous marketing around in terms of like space heaters and other Kickstarter's and lots of things that claim to be more efficient. So let's go through the basic theory of how to heat a room up and the different types of heat transfer that you actually get in a room. Let's go because it's rather interesting and it's probably more to it than you think.

Now we first have to look at the three different types of heat transfer. and because these terms this terminology gets mixed up a lot and I'm guilty of it myself just through sheer laziness or not explaining it properly and marketing, of course, they get these things completely wrong all the time as well. So let's start with conduction. If you've got a material like this and it's hot at one end and cold at the other, the heat will transfer or conduct through the particular medium.

and I've done a whole video on the concept of heat sinks for example, which I'll link in the end which is very interesting in terms of electronics engineering. Now conduction depends upon the thermal resistance of the material that you're conducting through and it doesn't have to be a physical material like metal metal happens to be or various types of metal happen to be the best conductors. But you can also get heat conduction through I gases and liquids as well. They're just not as effective, but some different types of gases much better than others, some different types of fluids much better than others, some different types of metals much better than others, and of course you could have like metals like join together and if this one's hot and this one's cold, it can flow through one to the other.

but it's basically it conducts through a medium. whether that's metal, liquid, or gas. This is basically the second law of Thermodynamics Here, because hot atoms are going to vibrate, they have a lot of energy, and they're naturally going to tend to move towards or spread out towards the less energetic areas over there. So that's why you're going to get heat conduction.

It's basically the second law of Thermodynamics show the heat death of the universe. All that sort of stuff Energy's just tends to dissipate and spread out eventually. It's pretty miserable. now.

the second type of heat transfer is convection, and you might be familiar with that term. A convection microwave oven, for example, has a fan in there to force the air and circulate it around. The air convects around inside the space, and a similar sort of thing can happen in a room when you're trying to heat it up. If you've got a space heater, for example that uses convection, then of course you're familiar.

No doubt with that. hot air rises. That's why balloons go up and everything else. So the hot air rises like this and then it like it comes around the room.
If the room is well insulated and will go into this and you get natural convection going around like that and there's two different types is natural and forced. As I said, a natural one doesn't use any fan at all and you might be familiar with these oil heaters or some other type of either heaters that don't have any fans in them. They've got these big fins on them and they basically they heat up an oil inside, but they've got these large surface areas that the air circulating in the room goes over the fins. It rises up like this and then it naturally comes down and it sort of heats up the room rather slowly by natural convection.

There's no fan forced type system, but you can also get the you know, the box type ones. They have a big like fan in them like this and then they have some heater elements on them and they actually force the air out to help it circulate around the room and they can be more effective, not efficient. They can be more effective in heating a room faster, for example, because they force the air around the room rather than just relying on natural convection. and this is why if you stand near one of these oil radiators that have no fans in them, you have to get reasonably close to them to sort of like feel any heat designed to heat up a volume of a room quite slowly through natural convection.

And once again, convection needs a medium through which the heat can transfer. In this particular case, air inside a room. So both convection and conduction. because they need a medium to transfer the heat through, they do not work in a vacuum, ie.

they don't work in outer space. So the Sun for example, which is the heat source for this planet, can't use conduction or convection. There's no medium for it to transfer through. So you can think of convection working where you have a surface that's hot like a surface element like a panel radiator for example that sits on your wall, and it has a large surface that heats up all these fins that heat up, for example, and then the air circulates past those fins and convex.

It's a sort of like a transfer from a surface onto a medium, another medium, typically air, of course, that circulates over that, and it just draws the heat away by the process of convection. Now, it's an infrared radiation. As I said at the start, this doesn't need a medium to transfer through. so all of the heat energy coming from the Sun is in terms of radiation.

in this case, infrared radiation. And this is just like any other type of electromagnetic spectrum radiation. In fact, if you look at your electromagnetic spectrum, you'll find that part of it is the infrared radiation ie. heat, but then that is broken down into many different types and we're going to be a bit loosey-goosey with the wavelengths here.
For example, these are wavelengths in micrometers. for five different types of typical IR spectrum. You might hear near infrared which other is used for night-vision goggles that so that's a frequency range generally up to about a thousand nanometers or one micrometer wavelength, and then you've got short wavelength infrared radiation mid long, and then far infrared. So you might hear these terms in there different, like depending on which standard you follow.

Like the ISO standard for example, uses the term near mid and far. For example, it doesn't have short and long, so don't really fuss over the exact categories. But basically all this sort of stuff in the middle. Here is what's called thermal radiation.

And don't confuse that with infrared radiation because it's a specific wavelength which can be dependent upon the temperature of the in this case, for heaters, the heating element, for example, you might be familiar if you heat your soldering iron up enough. maybe at 500 degrees C you'll start to see it glow like a dull red and then it might go into you know, orange and then yellow and then Wyatt it's a you know 1500 degrees C or there abouts. So that's why say your bar radiator heaters. and here's a photo of one of those you're more familiar with.

They just have the bars with typically with a reflector at the back because that will reflect the radiation off the back of that and towards you. So these are actually directed radiation heaters. so they will heat the object or a surface at a distance via radiation, not via conduction, not via convection, but pure electromagnetic radiation from the source into the object that you're heating. And by the way, the energy goes up with a fourth power of the temperature.

That's Stefan Boltzmann's law. Won't go into the details. So in terms of commercial infrared IR heaters that you can buy, they typically like a panel mount. you mount them on the wall for example and you might get these in your bathroom.

And for those who don't like the visible glow of which it can be quite hard on your eyes of a bar radiator heater you can get like ceramic radiator heaters and other types. You can get new graphene-based ones which are infrared radiators so they're designed to heat the object directly. So if you've got your panel radiator here, it goes across the room and it'll heat up. Put a little human on the other side.

Well, it's not actually heating up the air in between. That's the theory. Anyway, now this is where we have to get into actually practical space or room heating or with heaters that you can buy. And they come in two types: either the convection type or the radiation type.

You don't really get conduction heaters because air is a pretty-pretty pork and duck, but in practice, it doesn't matter what type of heater that you buy. Whether it's a convection heater or a radiation heater and infrared heater, they're all going to have some small but non-trivial amount of conducted heat through the air. Air is certainly a poor conductor, but it doesn't have an infinitely high thermal resistance. So you do get some conducted heat through the air.
And any infrared panel heater, even no matter how well it's designed, is also going to do convection as well. Because you've got this big panel, this big surface area, you're going to get the, you know, convection currents just can't avoid it. So it's going to heat the room via both direct infrared radiation and via convection and some conduction as well. And likewise, if you've got a pure convection heater like one of those oil radiators, or one of those fan forced little space heaters with the element and the fan to circulate through the air.

They're also going to produce some infrared radiation as well. So it really depends upon how the product is actually designed, whether or not it's predominantly IR radiation or whether it's predominantly convention. But every type of heater is going to have at least a combination of these things. So these infrared or radiation heaters come in several types.

They might be as I said. the panels that you stick on the wall is you can't see any visible glow from, but they still actually produce infrared radiation which actually goes across the room and heats the object over here directly. And these are really useful if you're outside. For example, if you're sitting on your table at you know you're having dinner here for example.

and then you might have one of these infrared heat lamps which you you know go down and they will heat the people directly Like that and any conviction losses are just sort of, you know, lost out into the free air. so you know really, you want those to be as well designed infrared radiators as possible. You got to lose some to conviction for example, and some are conduction to the middle and things like that which then is going to have its own little you know it, convection. one's going off the surface and things like that.

but mostly it's going to be infrared radiation seventy or eighty percent or even a little bit higher direct of the power that you put into it heating up the actual objects. Which might be great if you're outside at a table. for example, having dinner late at night and it's really cold you, you know you like that heater. But inside a house, these aren't necessarily the best thing because You? might feel like you're getting, you know, baked by this infrared heater.

And of course, if you walk from here over to here in the other part of the room and the infrared is going in that direction, then well, you're gonna feel more really cold in this part of the room and not here. so that's not necessarily good for a large living environment like this. It's okay if you're sitting a lounge and then the heaters on the wall in front of you. it might feel pretty good, but it's not going to be great if you want to live inside you know, a relatively large like a house or a lounge room or something like that.
and that's why these different type of heaters are available. You might have one of these oil heaters for example, which is going to convict around like this and eventually heat up and keep the room at a certain temperature. And you might combine that with say an IR panel heater if you're just sitting on a lounge and you just want to be heated up directly. So this is are going to be faster, much faster and more effective than turning on a radiator that's ever going to use natural or force convection.

As I said, false convection will be faster, but natural radiation might take hours to lift the temperature of this room. but you've got to be careful with how you use and apply different types of heaters. Let's say you have an infrared radiator heater and it might be 80% you know or more infrared radiation. Well that's great.

but if you have, say a glass window over here that could shoot straight out of the window because the glass is typically going to be fairly transparent to the infrared radiation. but that depends on the wavelength and also this thermal radiation that you get with a thermal imaging camera I can demonstrate that now how thermal radiation doesn't get glass through glass at all, But infrared radiation at a specific wavelength will actually pass fairly trans apparently through a window. so you don't want to be pointing that at a window. You just gotta lose most of your heat directly out the window.

So I've got my Flirty 8 thermal imaging camera here and this is designed to detect thermal radiation and you have no doubt familiar with these things. They're very cool and let's have a look to see what glass actually does. So I've got my glass cubicle here like this. as you can see if I'm in front of it like there's my thermal imaging profiles detecting the heat coming from here and these types of cameras will work up to you know, quite high temperatures many many hundreds of degrees as well as like body temperature as well.

But if I go behind the glass, oops, where's my hand? It ain't there. Where's my body? Half of its gone. Check it out. isn't that cool.

And if I put my hands right up to it, you still can't see anything at all because the wavelength, the particular wavelength of the thermal radiation that we're seeing here with this camera simply cannot get through glass. But I've done a video on this as well. It'll go perfectly fine through plastic. Don't try this at home.

Kitties go. You should still be able to see me even though my head's behind this. plastic works fine through plastic at this wavelength, but the particular wavelengths we're talking about here just can't penetrate glass. So that's why you can actually use glass on these infrared panels because they're the correct wavelength to go through.
it's and it's almost transparent to that particular wavelength. And maybe just maybe if I left my hand there long enough, it might eventually conduct through. But as I said, glass is a poor thermal conductor. But if I put my hand on front like that, you might be able to.

Maybe you can see my hand prints. Cool, huh? And let's say, if you had one of these newfangled glass infrared heaters for example that doesn't have a reflector on the back of it, it's got glass. It's got the heating element inside, which is generating infrared direct infrared radiation, but it can come out both sides. It's got glass on both sides.

Then if you go and hang this on the wall, for example, Well, how few infrared energy is gonna go that way and a half's gonna go into your wall Over here, it's gonna heat up the wall. Just be careful how you mount these things. Now here comes the tricky business. Let's say you put a thousand watts into an infrared panel heater that emitted both sides.

Let's assume in that there's no convection at all. It's not true, but let's just assume 500 watts going in this direction, but you might have 500 watts going in the other direction as well. It's assumed it's a symmetrical design so that 500 watts is going in to heating up the wall and the wall is going to conduct because they'd say a physical medium is going to actually conduct the heat out and then you'll get conviction on the outside which will then take it off. the service you remember.

convection is designed to take heat from a surface into an air medium. So yeah, if you see one of these glass infrared panel heaters that have glass on both sides and no reflective surface on one side and you see them hanging on a wall, just have a bit of a giggle because you're wasting a lot of power. But in theory let's say you had a perfectly insulated wall, there was no conduction out of there. Then you're basically heating up that wall with the 500 watts and then that wall will have convective air currents which will take that off.

So really, in terms of heating up or raising the temperature of your room, that heat is effectively going to stay inside your room assuming there's no conduction out. But of course, in practice, you're going to have heat conduction losses out your walls. so you've got to be careful with actually comparing the effectiveness of one type of heater to another. If you've got one of these infrared heaters, it's great.

heating up you and you go turn it on. You go. Oh, that feels nice and warm. How fantastic is this? It's only drawing a hundred watts and Oh a couple hundred watts.

I Feel fantastic, but it's not raising the temperature of your room. if anything, In fact, your room could be cooling down due to losses, which we now have to go into. And one other thing you've got to be careful of is when you're measuring the performance of heaters like this in a room, Let's say you had your thermometer here like this and you know you're getting a reading on your thermometer. Be careful that that's not heating up the thermometer.
That thermometer may not actually represent the temperature of the room. You really have to put them in the dead spots like this in multiple points to you know, really get a feel for how much the room temperature has actually risen. So these IR here is, Just be careful with them. And here's where the terminology gets mixed up A lot.

These oil radiators are actually called radiators They wrap as in like it. But if you want to go strictly by the terminology, radiation only refers to infrared radiation electromagnetic radiation that hits a source directly. But it's common industry terminology to call these radiators. so the terminology is quite muddled up.

But you've got to realize that they're actually really majority convection heaters and not Ione. There's certainly not majority IR radiation heaters. Now here comes the crux of this video. Really, how do you raise the temperature of a room Or a space? Now it comes down to an old-school unit called BTUs or British thermal units.

But you don't have to use BTUs because BTUs are directly equivalent to what's our electrical power. So if you put say, a thousand watts into an electric heater inside a room, if it's drew in a thousand watts, you're going to generate X amount of BTUs. Now what's is actually an amount of energy per second. It includes a time component one.

What Is it actually equal to one? Joule per second? It's got that time component in it. Likewise, BTUs have a time component as well. So you can just directly convert from BTUs to watts. Or what's the BTU is 1.

What is that? Approximately 3.4 BTUs per hour? Because it has that time component and you can work in terms of joules, you can work in terms of what's Or you can work in terms of BTUs or British thermal units. They're all equivalent. You can convert one from the other, but it's basically heat overtime. Now, as I mentioned in a previous video, if you've got a heater in the room, doesn't matter what type a heater, if it's say a thousand.

Heder By definition, any electric heater ie. it uses an element to heat up is 100% efficient. Remember, efficient is different from effectiveness. I Our heaters might be more effective at heating up a person directly, but in terms of heating up the temperature of a room, all that matters is the power ie.

the watts or the BTUs So any form of heater, it doesn't matter if it's a thousand watts of direct infrared, it doesn't matter if it's a thousand watts, convective, If it doesn't, you know it doesn't matter what it is. if you're putting if you've got inside a sealed a room and you're generating a thousand watts and also consuming a thousand watts from the mains because they're always or my practically by definition a hundred percent efficient. So if you see any manufacturer out there claim that their heater, whether it's infrared type, doesn't matter whether it uses magic woo-whoo graphene in it or whatever the whiz-bang marketing technology is in there, if it's generating a thousand watts, it's exactly the same as any other 1,000 watt heater and you can't get around this. This is basic thermodynamics to heat a volumetric space, you need X amount of BTUs In this case it like BTUs includes that our component.
You have to put that energy into the room in order to heat it up. Now let's assume that we have any sort of heater. Doesn't matter what type it is, it's inside this room. It's generating a thousand BTUs per hour, which is equivalent to roughly 293 watts.

So if you bought a 293 What? I our panel heater that you hang on your wall is generated in a thousand BTUs an hour into this room. But of course rooms aren't perfectly insulated. You're going to have losses through like gaps in your wall. You're going to have windows over here.

You're going to get some losses out of there because glass is. well, it's a fairly poor thermal can, has poor thermal conductivity. it's you know you can't actually lose a lot of energy out your windows. which is why we have double glazed windows for example and a double brick wall construction.

They'll have like an air gap in the walls and they're better thermally insulated. A house has built that way better thermally insulated than one that just has a single brick construction. It's called double brick construction and double glazing windows because they'll have that air gap because air is. Although glass is still pretty poor, there's even poorer.

so air is a better insulator. so that's why you take these measures. When you're building an energy-efficient house, you want to try and keep the heat in there, but it doesn't matter what you do, you're going to get losses, conducted losses through top roof. which is why you'll have you.

You know, your insulated pink bats for example. You'll put those you know, those wool insulation bats in. You're really to stop that heat being conducted and then convicted out through your roof. And that's why you'll have these little you know worldly bird call and lowly birds here in Australia.

Stick them on your roof and they vent the hot air because you've got the radiation coming in from the Sun It's going to heat up this roof and if you're trying to cooled it. but that's a cooling thing anyway. you can actually lose heat via your roof as well as putting heat into the room as well. But yeah, you want to avoid conducting out that and then convicting out of your roof.

You want to avoid conducting out your windows and your walls and your slab. You know, if you've just got a wooden floor board for example, it's going to be worse than a big concrete slab. And so you've got all these losses. But let's assume that all of our losses added up everywhere totals a thousand BTUs per hour, and it's actually quite difficult to actually model and measure all of these losses.
which is why we have like just lots of rules of thumb and other industry things which we'll go into. But let's say your total losses. You can measure it at a thousand BTUs an hour. If you're putting a thousand BTUs an hour into your heater where your heaters generating a thousand BTUs an hour, that's what you're pulling from the mains and it's heating up this room, then your losses equal the amount generated.

So you will not by definition basic laws of thermodynamics. You will not be able to raise the temperature of this room. Yeah, if you're here, for example, right next to it, you might be. Oh, you know you're gonna feel warmer, but the entire temperature of the living space will not rise not a single degree Because you're your generation equals your losses.

And when discussing this sort of thing, the question always comes up well. what if a lot of my energy is light or vibration? For example, if you've got the You Beam transmitter that's transmitting a thousand kilowatts of ultrasonic energy from one side of the room to the other, Well, that thousand watts has to go somewhere. It's being generated inside that room, so it's got to heat up the air molecules. It might heat up the the person who's standing in front of it or whatever it is might heat up the walls or whatever.

And likewise, if you got while those infrared panel heaters, if they're facing a wall for example, it's gonna heat up the wall. But the point is, it doesn't matter what type of radiation it is. Light, sound, vibration, you might say. for example, that one of those are found forced fan, convection heaters, for example.

Well, you've got to use power for the fan. Therefore, it's not a hundred percent efficient. It might be 99 or 95 or whatever because you've got a waste energy to the fan. But the that extra power that goes in the power and the fan, it's going to be lost in bearing, friction, for example, winding resistance, all sorts of stuff.

It doesn't matter, there's still a hundred percent efficient. The energy eventually gets converted into heat doesn't matter what it is, so don't let anyone say that any form of heater is not a hundred percent efficient, because it ultimately will be. You've got a thousand BTUs an hour into that space. And likewise, if your losses are a thousand BTUs an hour and you're not generating a thousand BTUs an hour because you've only got a pissant 200 watt heater, for example, this room is eventually going to cool down.

the temperature is going to drop until it reaches some sort of equilibrium, but it's certainly not going to stay the same. You cannot beat the laws of physics, captain, so just remember: no amount of whoo-whoo graphene or other technology whiz-bang marketing that claims some heater is more efficient. He's 100 percent demonstrable. It's all about BTUs per hour and there's basic calculators online, and they do vary quite a lot.
but they try to estimate the amount of losses like they might have. you know, low, high, or more normal type losses in a room. And to work out how much energy you need, how many BTUs an hour or what wattage heater that you need to heat up a room? Let's say we have a 15 square meter room. 5 meters by 3 meters by 2.5 You use one of these many calculators available and let's say you wanted to increase the temperature of this room by 10 degrees Celsius Then what? you'd put that into the calculator and you need 4,200 BTUs an hour or roughly twelve hundred and fifty watt heater inside that room.

We'll eventually do it. Like I said, there's lots of practical aspects into this, like if you have your heater over in this corner of the room over here and you happen to have it near lots of losses around this part of the room, then you're going to have a harder time rising, increasing the temperature on this side of the room for example, so you know it. There's really a lot of variability in here, but the basic fundamental thermodynamics are the same. You need to increase that by 10 degrees.

C You might need twelve hundred and fifty watts and that can vary. If you had really good insulation, you might only need say 750 watts. We could need like two and a half thousand watts depending upon that thing. But if you buy like a little two hundred watt panel for example and expect it to increase the temperature of a 15 square meter room by 10 degrees.

Celsius So in basic heat transfer Theory the heat always moves towards the colder object. So if you've got, you know, really lots of losses over on this side of the room, you might have a door open for example. Then you're going to get lots of transfer of the heat or lots of convection over to sort of this cold part of the room. You gonna get lots of losses over there.

So yes, while certain different types of heaters either a direct infrared irradiation heater they can feel that's all about the fields versus reals, they can feel more effective. but they aren't really necessarily going to increase the temperature of the room unless they've got X number of BTUs an hour to overcome the losses in the room. There's just no way around it. But hey, if you get like a little you know a couple of hundred watt heater infrared heater and you're sitting right near it.

In front of it, you've got a red or a bar radiator heater for example. You sit in front of it, you're gonna feel toasty, warm, even too warm. but that's not going to help you much if you get off and walk around the room and all that sort of stuff, you want a comfortable living space. But in terms of heating up a space heating a room heating it's X number of BTUs versus the losses.
and you need more BTUs input than you have in losses. It's just a fundamental aspect of thermodynamics and just be aware that there is no such thing as a more efficient heater like a space heater. It doesn't matter what the marketing claims doesn't matter what woo-woo material they use inside the thing, it's useless. It's all electric heaters regardless of their type.

100 percent efficient. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Yeah, generally if you want to heat up a space, get one with a fan based forced convection system that's going to heat up a larger volume of air in a room quicker than any IR radiator or any just one of those naturally convection oil heaters. And don't let any market and also tell you that things can magically generate heat when there's no electrical input, you have to put in electrical power to get heat output.

Now in the oil radiators for example, they're actually Oh Quite a good thermal heat sink because the element, the resistive element in there heats up the oil and they actually stay hot for a long time. But when you pull the plug, yeah, they'll still feel like they're a yoke and they still will be convicting heat out. But that's only because they're a heat buffer. It's you don't magically continue to get more energy out when you look at the whole energy equation for heating up the room.

So any claim about any whoo whoo technology that can magically generate heat during an off cycle or when the power is off. Nah, it's just a heat buffer. When the equations are all said and done, it at the end of the day, you haven't generated anymore. You have an input any more energy into your room.

Now by definition, even though the different types of heaters, they're all 100% efficient. Some heaters can be more efficient than others, but we do need to be very careful with how we say this. Let's say that you have a heater on this side of the room and all you care about is heating. Your definition of efficiency.

This is where the definitions matter is: heating this part of the room over here by say, 10 degrees. Celsius. Then that's where an infrared heater for example that heats up that spot directly might be more efficient. In terms of the overall system.

in heating up that particular spot, then say a convey slow our convection natural convection heater over this side of the room. it's going to take much longer and hence require more BTUs and more power, more electrical energy to heat up that spot by a given temperature then another type of, say, infrared heater would for example. So you've got to be very careful how you specify this. It's in terms of a total system efficiency.
Really hesitant to use the term, but I Think we need to explain that technically it's possible, but that does not give a license to the manufacturers to claim on that on their marketing material on the box that their heater is more efficient than any other type of heater. They're all a hundred percent efficient in terms of converting electrical energy into heat. so they have no way of knowing what the end-use configuration is. so there's no way that they can say it's 800 times more efficient.

It's eight times more efficient. It uses 1/8 the power. It uses half the power of a competing unit. That's because they don't know the end system configuration.

So if you see that claim on any type of heating product, you know it's and be careful of any company that users say what's per hour for example, you know they have no clue what they're talking about. It's just what's because it's joules per second. It already has a time component so you can't go what's per hour, which then would be an accelerated time thing. Yeah, the just keeps accelerating.

So all electrical heat is 100% efficient. That's it. End of story. The only way you can get greater than 100 percent efficiency on an individual heater like the actual heating unit is when you use what's called a heat pump.

And this is how air conditioners work. They aren't just generating the heat inside the room, they're actually pumping it like outside the system. So the the system efficiency or the coefficient of performance or cop it's cord can be greater than one. So air conditioners can technically have an efficiency greater than a hundred percent without beating the laws of physics.

but what that actually means. So let's say you have a 1 kilowatt air conditioner, for example. You know it's got the unit on the outside. remember that it's actually outside.

Then it can actually generate more BTUs per hour than the equivalent electrical energy input. So that's why it's it's not beating the laws of physics or anything like that. it's just because it's working as a heat pump and they are a real thing. That's our air Cons work, but that's story for another video.

But anyone else who claims that anything's more than efficient than any other type in terms of using electrical heaters, you know they full of crap. So there you go I hope you found that useful. This was actually a lot longer than not expecting, but he did waffle on a bit. But anyway, there's a lot of stuff which goes into this.

But the basics BTUs In BTUs Out in losses, That's what it comes down to pretty much. But yeah, some different types of heaters can feel more effective than others, but at the end of the day depends on your particular circumstances. But as always, you can I beat the laws of physics Captain Energy in versus losses. That's all it comes down to.

So I hope you found that useful. If you did, please give it a big thumb. One thumb up is fine because that's all you can do. And as always, comment down below or on the EEV blog forum.
Catch you next time you.

Avatar photo

By YTB

22 thoughts on “Eevblog #1187 – room heater technology explained”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Tom Mendenhall says:

    My cheap 1500 BTU $250 electric fireplace uses all 3 types of heat transfer. It has a quartz IR lamp shining on an aluminum heatsink with a fan blowing out warm air.

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars The Tech Q says:

    This is the best video on space heaters I've seen from a theory perspective. It covers in appropriate detail what is typically only covered in many other videos. Thank you.

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Tom Mendenhall says:

    I'm going to mount a bathroom type incandescent IR lamp on the ceiling directly above my bed so my cat and I can be warm immediately when we wake up in the morning. It will be on a timer to avoid falling asleep with the lamp on all night.

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Simon C says:

    Whilst I find this very entertaining and educational, can I ask a question… When you say these heaters are all 100% efficient, that doesn’t mean that all of the consumed energy is being converted to heat in all cases, does it? Considering the old fashioned bar heater, isn’t some of the energy creating light in our visible spectrum? Does the heating element of an oil filled radiator also glow but we cannot see it? Or have I been to the Solus School of Wizardry?

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Arthur Vin says:

    LCD TV is 100% efficient heater, refrigerator is 100% efficient heater, peltier device is 100% efficient heater, ceiling fan is 100% efficient heater.

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Ano Nymous says:

    The coldest countries have solved this problem with a simple truth: they just have regular old convection heaters working ALL DAY so they are gonna be heat up anyway, no need waiting or no need for short term fast heating with radiation.
    It's mainly warmer countries like Australia and south Europe that get these dilemmas.

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars theuncalledfor says:

    I'm glad to finally know that heat pumps can be more than 100% efficient (as in they pump more heat than they use in energy). Though I still don't know the maximum efficiency ever achieved and I'd be willing to bet there are differences in how much you can pump based on circumstances.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Cepheid says:

    How do thermal cameras focus ir light?

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars electron1979 says:

    So convection is just conduction through moving air?
    To have convection, you first need to heat the air by conduction?

    "Convection is the heat transfer due to the bulk movement of molecules within fluids such as gases and liquids, including molten rock (rheid)", Wikipedia

    "In convection, internal energy is carried between bodies by a moving material carrier. In gases and liquids, conduction is due to the collisions and diffusion of molecules during their random motion", Wikipedia

  10. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars darknessblade says:

    How about those radiator fans you put on the radiator to spread the heat faster

    Would they improve the spread of heat better than a normal water filled panel radiator without the fans

    Ps would a diy version with X amount pc fans be better than a store bought one

  11. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Necessaryevil 86 says:

    Ahh…. I have always tought that Australians are cool, but now I see that they use the prehistoric BTU unit! I still think Australians are cool but I am a bit dissapointed!

  12. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Joe3D says:

    Be careful with IR, can be pretty harsh on the eyes. Some green lasers also emit IR radiation because the optics are not shielded properly. Check this channel for more information:
    THE ISSUE WITH GREEN LASER POINTERS
    Brainiac75

  13. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars DAVID GREGORY KERR says:

    What about a large metal plate with fins with an Induction coil driven by an inverter running at 250KHZ of power of 750W, the induction coil will be protected by Rock-wool.

  14. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Holder Bee says:

    All this talk about slow heating.. must say a cheap new oil radiator will heat up plenty quickly.. you will be reaching for the thermostat. And it's silent :):):):) It simply looks like a beast or outdated or something. Also, it seems the heater EFFECTIVENESS up for grabs.. for example the oil radiator could have any number of fins but someone did some measurements and decided on a number

  15. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Ben Davis says:

    So I guess the magical reverse cycle units that run on usb might be out of the question then haha

  16. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Niko Tumi says:

    Does a thermal sheet act the same way as the glass does?

  17. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars tel607 says:

    Apart from the marketing bs. When talking about the efficiency of heating systems, we usually think of thermal comfort for people with less energy (less heating).

    Surface floor heating (by radiation) allows reaching the comfort of the patient at much lower temperatures.

    Radiant heating in buildings with high ceilings (production halls) allows you to provide thermal comfort to employees when it is needed at the same time not to heat thousands of m3 of air.

    Radiant heating has its place but it must be used in a place where you can take advantage of the advantages of the system

    In home applications, the first thing we care about is the insulation of the building followed by the heating method

    Marketing heating for 20% of the day is 80% more effective than nonstop heating.

    Cheaters are not short of people and people do not understand what they read, and marketing bs goes much easier on fertile ground

    In Poland, there is recently a popular scam, called induction heating or an induction heat pump. Summing up the 2 kw electric heater for 1,400 euros. Comfortable and without an emissive home heating system. (-;

    Thumb up

  18. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars cannesahs says:

    BTU 🤬

  19. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Anna Øvrebø says:

    As an electrical engineer there is nothing new. But what I do not understand is why I spent so many years in school learning nothing abut this, but I did spend hours and hours trying to learn about all the x and y's and so on plus all the nonsense stuff in mathematics that I never use and I do not know anybody that really used this in normal life. I feel the schools are making losers instead of winners, at least in the Norwegian systems. So many highly skilled practical skilled people drop out of school because of a total academic view of education. And so many times people ask me… Why does my fuse trip all the time?

  20. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars penguins forall says:

    The issue of calling a space heater a radiator is sort of like calling a tomato a fruit. It's right but it depends on the field of terminology. Properly radiation is actually electromagnetic radiation where radiation just means to spread out (it means wheel spoke in Latin, the spokes spread out from the center). So radiation with a gas medium is just convection. In physics radiation means the transfer of energy via particles. So a radiator "spreads" heat. But radiant heating "spreads" electromagnetic particles (aka photons).

  21. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars penguins forall says:

    Ceiling mount heaters are probably better since they'd transmit through the floor below.

  22. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Artūrs Savickis says:

    I made a Scam report on that fake ass Solus radiator on Kickstarter, including also link to Dave’s video, and few other engineers busting those fake ad pitches. Unfortunatly, as expected, they sent an answer to me today saying, “thanks, we appreciate your feedback. We looked at the engineer’s video that you sent, but we still don’t see Solus promising something that they can’t deliver”. Like what the F*CK Kickstarter?! I provided you with all the evidence necessary to close down on such scams, but they did nothing to step it. I guess money doesn’t stink, regardless of where it’s coming from – Kickstarter craving that sweet % of all donations…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *