Intercoolers in General

[Alan Faircloth]

I've been following a recent thread about a new horizontal intercooler. While at the SEMA show, I spent an hour discussing a new product a manufacturer had for turbocharged cars to cool the intake charge. I would like to know what people on this board think about it from an effectiveness or problems standpoint.

The product would work by using liquid nitrogen to cool intake charges. The nitrogen would be pumped through a series of HP lines and then through a wild looking aluminum pipe that inserts into an air charge pipe. For example, the guy said he would prefer to make a new air pipe that feeds the throttle body from the Intercooler and includes the alum. insert. The idea is that the nitrogen would cause the alum. pipe to get VERY cold and air passing over that pipe would be cooled down just prior to entering the throttle body.

The idea sounded neat and the insert pipe had an egglike shape object in the center to maximize air cooling efficiency while minimizing air turbulence. The real question is whether this type of set up would actually work.

My initial negative reaction was to the need to have a bottle of liquid nitrogen on board and whether and what effect condensation buildup on the alum. insert pipe might have feeding into the TB.

The product looked pretty neat, but I'm not an expert on intercoolers and performance mods. Any other problems you guys think this type of a system might present?

Alan

 

[strikeeagle]

Liquid nitrogen isn't the most practical thing I've ever heard of. It's consumable, it's at high pressure, there's no way to control its temperature (it's -320 F), it's an asphyxiant - shall I go on???

 

[JDEstill]

In general, the things I would look at most to evaluate the potential would be temperature differential, surface area, and pressure drop.

A bottle of liquid nitrogen let down to atmospheric pressure will get pretty cold, so the big temperature difference between that and the IC outlet is a good thing.

Surface area for heat transfer... what I'm envisioning from your description doesn't have much surface area. Low surface area means small heat exchange. That's why we use finned surfaces on radiators and air/air intercoolers, because they have a high surface area. The big temperature difference can make up for the low surface area somewhat, it's hard to say without seeing the thing whether this particular case would or not.

Pressure drop, if this thing is in the IC outlet pipe, how much of a restriction does it impose? If you lose 1 psi of pressure across it, it had better drop the charge temp a bunch to make it worthwhile!

Just my 2 pennies.

John

 

[bruce]

Originally posted by Alan Faircloth
I've been following a recent thread about a new horizontal intercooler. While at the SEMA show, I spent an hour discussing a new product a manufacturer had for turbocharged cars to cool the intake charge.

Investing in a copy of Hugh MacInnes Book AND Corky Bells MAx Boost, would be a good thing to do. Somewhere between the two probably would be an excellent idea.

The problem with Intercoolers in general is that they are just heat sinks, and thus saturate. Well at least for any practical size.