Method for operating a diesel fuel filter heater
AssigneeBorgWarner BERU Systems GmbH
InventorsPeter Schaefer, Clement Rinkert
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Abstract
The invention relates to a method for operating a diesel fuel filter heater comprising at least one PTC element, in a motor vehicle. According to the invention, a glow plug control device is used to generate an effective voltage from a vehicle system voltage using pulse width modulation, which is then applied at the filter heater.
Claims10
A method for operating a diesel fuel filter heater, said heater comprising at least one PTC element, wherein a control device is used to generate an effective voltage from a vehicle system voltage using pulse width modulation, which is applied to the filter heater, said method comprising determining a requirement for continued heating of the fuel filter on the basis of power consumed by the filter heater, wherein the electrical resistance of the heater is regulated to a setpoint value, wherein a value is selected as a setpoint value of the electrical resistance which is located between a minimum and an inflection point of the resistance-temperature characteristic curve of the PTC element.
A method for operating a diesel fuel filter heater, said heater comprising at least one PTC element, wherein a control device is used to generate an effective voltage from a vehicle system voltage using pulse width modulation, which is applied to the filter heater, said method comprising:
- determining a requirement for continued heating of the fuel filter on the basis of power consumed by the filter heater;
- monitoring the power consumed by the filter heater after a heating-up phase is monitored and compared to a specified threshold value in order to check the functionality of the heated diesel fuel filter;
- and
- generating a warning signal if the power is less than the threshold value while a pump is used to pump diesel fuel from a tank to the diesel fuel filter is switched on.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.