Intercoolers

[madKE35coupe]

just thought i might ask around, how cold is the air that comes out of an intercooler? also how cold would it be if you ran an electric fan on the intake end instead of a turbo? probably sounds stupid i just wanted to know for a bit of an experiment

[Twinky]

 

The facepalm is made up of facepalms relating to how I am now facepalming.

[BUZ440]

Alot of variances with that one mate, air and road temps, humidity, air being sucked into your filter if you have one, and the type of fuel you run it with, size of the turbo, how much heat in your engine bay, how long your pipes are and thickness of your cooler,

 

i would not envision an electric fan would assist productively IMO,

 

in my car, on a cold night, it spins all the way to fourth gear, normal hot day mid way thru third then the hilux LSD hooks up, so colder and denser the air, the better really

[ke70dave]

that face palm picture is fantastic.

 

now mr madke35coupe,

 

what yo need to read, is some intercooler theory.

 

http://www.gnttype.org/techarea/turbo/intercooler.html

 

here is a good start

 

also intercoolers aint intercoolers. bar and plate, tube and fine, length, height weight, direction of tubs, end tank size, does the interocoler have diversion plates inside, pipe size....

 

not to mention the different varibals effecting temperature of the air exiting the turbo: density and temp of air entering turbo, pressure ratio of turbo (ie "boost") and so on....

 

then on how good the intercooler does, is dependant on the design of the intercooler, air flow of "cold" air onto the intercooler, and most importantly the temperature difference between the fluid you are trying to cool, and the being cooled.

 

now onto your second question about the electic fan acting as a turbo, if you google "electric turbo" there are heaps of companies that reckon they can do it, but i generally don't belive them....and here is why.

 

your engine eats an INSANE amount of air.

 

if we assume about 80% volumetric efficiency (google it), then your engine (I'm going to assume a 1.3L 4k) eats 0.8*1.3 = 1.04L/revolution of engine.

 

so at 7000rpm, it will eat ~7280L/minute of air. (7000*1.04)

 

the fan you choose needs to be able to flow this much air in order to keep up with your engine, ie it wont produce any boost with this. Now i don't know how to work out how much it needs to flow to produce boost, but its going to be about a metric shiteload. and getting a "Fan" to actually produce pressure is another story all together.

 

which is why turbo chargers are such a masterpeice of engineering!!

[altezzaclub]

The heat comes from taking say, 100L of air and compressing it to 50L. Although it takes up a lot less room, it still has all the 25deg heat now jammed into a smaller space, so its a lot hotter in temperature. There is no way around that, be electric turbo, exhaust turbo or supercharger.

 

Then you add the heat you had to put in as energy to compress it, which is about the same for all 3 systems if they compress the same amount. That's in the mechanical effeciency.

 

..and just to top it off for exhaust turbos you have an extra heat load because the steel chamber it went through is almost glowing red hot. That is the only part that you can dodge by using an electric fan instead of a exhaust turbo.

 

A mate with a supercharged V8 in his Datsun 280Z fitted a second supercharger. They lost power because the extra heat generated was a bigger drawback than the extra air compressed.

 

My simple cold-air ram system on the Corolla pushes stacks of air in, as I've just found out with the videos! It leaned the mixture off over 4000rpm quite noticeably until I vented the air cleaner box!

 

I think the electric supercharger is great idea and I'm dying for someone to buy one and fit it as I'd love to know how good they are. I'm just not willing to try it out for the money that might be wasted, as KE70dave is dead right!

[altezzaclub]

ooohhh!!

 

e-RAM energized while mounted to a 3.2L engine produced a DYNAMIC NET PRESSURE GAIN OF 1 PSI (shown on the pressure gauge in this picture)

 

Ah- this is better-

 

The 2011 Vortex Electric Supercharger is now a 950+WATT, axial-flow compressor that blasts out 5.0 PSI of thrust at 1000 cfm!

Hmmm, 1000cfm, convert to L/sec=470L/sec*60= 28000L/min which is 4times what your engine pulls. But it works on a floor switch so only comes on when you have your foot hard down.. that's because 950watts at 12V, 80amps, more than your alty ever puts out! Instant battery drain!

 

 

awww... This guy says they're all a scam!

 

http://www.wildweasel.ca/HowTo/Auto/eturbo.aspx

[madKE35coupe]

some pretty interesting facts there guys, but not exactly the plan i was going for. this will probably sound really stupid, and i feel kinda stupid for asking, but if you hooked an E charger up to the intercooler, would the air coming out be cold enough to be like a homemade air con? i know you are probably laughing right now, it was just a thought i had one day

[Hiro Protagonist]

but if you hooked an E charger up to the intercooler, would the air coming out be cold enough to be like a homemade air con?

 

No. Simple explanation is that since an intercooler is a heat exhanger, the output of the cooler will never be cooler than ambient air unless you have some kind of compressor driving the air through at high pressure. Since the electronic supercharger won't be generating much if any pressure (especially if you have no resistance in the system to provide back-pressure), all you are doing really is blowing air through a bunch of metal tubes - you might as well just blow the air straight at you.

[altezzaclub]

Nah... you'd never get it below ambient really. The wind chill should take it below ambient somewhat, but the fan would add some heat and so would any piping that ran through the engine bay.

 

How about an evaporative cooler system? Wet cloth that takes heat out of the air to evaporate and is continually wet from a tank. The cool damp air gets ducted inside. A flash version of hanging a wet towel in the window..

[Evan G]

http://autospeed.com.au/cms/A_112129/article.html

 

good read

 

12V operation

 

Maximum boost of 6.6 psi

 

Maximum shaft speed – 70,000 rpm

 

Maximum mass airflow – 100 kg/hour

 

Time to reach maximum shaft speed – 0.35 seconds

 

Current draw – idle 1.5 amps, acceleration – 350 amps, steady state – 220 amps

 

Operating temps – minus 40 degrees C to plus 125 degrees C

[philbey]

I've got am copy of this and it's a good read. Will answer all your questions.

 

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0073129305/information_center_view0/