Intake air cooler idea...Is it worth it?

Mike Manzo

Registered User
A friend of mine who builds movie props is going to take the cold air divider of Magnum Powers to a new level.

We plan to incorporate a sealed enclosure that draws from the air below the car as normal, but passes over possibly a transmission cooler.

The transmission cooler will contain a substance that retains its cold temperature very well, and yet still will flow with the assistance of a winshield washer pump mounted under the car (in the place where the old airbox was.

What cools the substance would be a weather-sealed (or internally mounted) 12V refrigeration unit much like that used for portable coolers.

The sealed enclosure also acts as a refirgerator itself with places to insert gel-packs which with the assistance of the transmission cooler pumping cold fluid through it to retain the temperature.

The casing would be insulated from engine heat as thouroughly as possible.


My question is will this (when associated with a upgraded intake setup such as MagPowers plenum, top and SC, have a difinitive effect on the air charge.

I would assume that if care is taken to insulate the intercooler tubes from the headers, that one could theoretically retain optimal fall-type temperatures for initial air charge.

We all know our SCs perform like mad in fall and winter and always have performance increases with cold air intakes ONLY migrating the filter below the car.

My friend and I are going to work on this to be mountable, but non-invasive (so you dont have to drill holes in the car or something). Sealed after the MAF and flex with engine torque and yet complete the fenderwell all the way to the front of the engine bay.

Another "cooling" possibility would be to utilize the AC to cool the coolant, but that could be tricky.


Everyone is cooling the intercooler which is great, but if you start out with cold air, the ending result should be cooler air at the end and thus when mixed with and IC application, it will produce a overall coldest-air system.

Any thoughts??

Thanks

Mike
 
Thermoelectrics are cool! (pun intended)

I'm working on a device that would go in line with an air/water IC after the heat exchanger but before the IC. Right now I can get the temp of the aluminum block down to 16F, condensation forms and freezes in minutes. After about 30 min it has about 1/16" of frost on it.

I thought about doing the same thing and a few others like mounting the trans cooler in front of the IC having an IC fan on it to pull the air through the cores.

The other idea was same as yours, but using a large heatsink (12L X 14W X 2"D, with 3/8" between cooling fins) covering the open side (so that air flows straight through the fins) and some sort of taper (maybe fiberglass) to fit up to the intake.

Jeff
 

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I may be seeing something else...

Is that one big peltier?

I was wondering about using solid state cooling (peltier) as I do on one of my P4 rigs, but never thought I could find one in a bigger size.

Let me know what u come up with. I dont like the cost of double intercoolers for the performance gains they dont seem to give.

What kind of coolant would u use for the other one? My friend and I thought of a gel-like material that still flows, but is similar to that used in gel-packs.

There is also waterless coolant (I forgot the name) its a bit thicker than antifreeze and retains temps very well.


I would love to know the details if ya wish to share...Not lookin to make a business out of it....Just go faster, use no water or spraying and not take up much space.

I was thinking of trans cooler in front of the IC, but since no one ever did this and it seems so fundamental, I kinda kept away from it thinking that it may not be the answer. The trick would be supercooling what is running through the cooler and how it would be done.

The Lightning concept gave me the idea of running lines around the AC to cool water or coolant that flows over it and running that to the cooler, but there is just so much wrong with that.

Let me know what u come up with..I may just pay ya to build one for me!!

Thanks!
 
It's actually 4 70W modules, and each is supposed to pump about 170 BTU's at 680 BTU's that doesn't sound like much to me. Then again I'm not real sure what would be good #'s anyway. I'm in the process of trying to figure out how much heat removed will give me temp in vs temp out #s.

For that test (which was last weekend) I just had water, a 2Qt pitcher, a small trans cooler and a "solid state"(my *** it's solid state) fuel pump. In the end I will have both sides milled out and almost identical. The in and out will be on the side and will probably run 50/50 water glycol.

Gel packs are ammonium nitrate and water (just don't mix it with fuel oil), it's an endothermic reaction (absorbs heat).

The cooler in front of the IC I'm going to try b4 the air/water. I still have a bunch to learn on this stuff. My biggest problem now is that it's so humid here that the condensation it a real pig. Last year I kept having to shut it off when I would see the cold side temp start to rise. The condensation would form on the underside of the cold heatsink and electrically and thermally short the system out. Silicon could be used but you still trap moisture in the sealed area causing corrosion and failure. Found that out about 2 years ago when one broke in half after sealing it. The other thing about these devices is the amount of current they draw. This one is right at 24 amps. I’m looking at some 102W devices, but they draw 16 amps a piece, for 64 total. That’s one more amp than my old Buick alternator put out!

Something else I was thinking about was mounting them directly to the IC and having a water cooled hot side, but I'm not sure it would be very efficient.

Jeff
 
btu=1.08*cfm*delta T

so if you know air flow and btu you can find out how much temperature change you will get.
 
I'm glad I'm not the only one who read the lightning concept setup and started thinking. My thought was of devising a system similar but setup that it always cooled the I/C coolant. I figure you could use an electric ompressor from a refrigerator (I have a small 1.4 cubic foot unit and the compressor/accumulator/evaporator is only like 1.5' x 6" x 6"). If that's enough to cool 1.4 cubic foot down to about 45 degrees, it should be more than enough to do the job (5 gal of coolant = .66 cubic foot) and most of it could be mounted in a space the size of the battery. If I had to cash to build it I would try.
 
im glad to see that the lightning concept thing i dug inspired some people :)

now we just need to get something in production so i can buy one.... lol
 
The down side to cooling the air charge prior to compression is that your potential drop in temperature is not as great. This is because the total heat content of the air you are cooling is dramatically less prior to compression than after compression.


Remember cold isn't added to space, heat is removed. Less heat to remove, means less possible cooling.

So certainly, there will be some benefit. But the effort to achieve the benefit may be low. And Pieltier devices burn a lot of energy to move the heat that they move.
 
SCrazy

That's the problem I'm not using a air/water IC yet. It's just the water so how would GPM figure into the equation?

Jeff
 
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