Water : Air Intercooling

[Nexus]

I think I found turbinetech's IC core supplier. 0.1 -> 0.2 PSI pressure drop.

Here's a wacky idea. Mod a TMIC so the exit endtank has a new outlet and put one of these between your air:air IC and throttle body.

Put a water resoviour in and you can throw ice in the resoviour to get boost temp below ambient...

Or...engineering tangent here - use a thermoelectric heat pump (peltier element) to moderate the temperature of the IC water collant (below ambient) and get tighter control of BAT's....a peltier element could quite easily start freezing the coolant at full volume...

[Nexus]

Doh. Didn't provide the link.

FrozenBoost.com

[Doug_MPS6]

AH_Louevres.jpglouvers.jpg

A bit too much kit to jam into the restricted space in these cars, I think. And you need to circulate the water coolant, which means a pump. I reckon a water mist-spray is simpler, the only issues being that you really need distilled or de-ionized water to minimize salting up the IC core, with periodic cleaning still being a necessity.

I'd like to provide more engine bay cooling, such as some nice classy louvreing at just the back of the bonnet immediately in front of the windscreen to allow an exit point for tall the hot air accumulating at the back of the engine bay above the turbo. It's hard to get good louvreing done, and it involves repainting the bonnet. See example in attached Austin Healey photo and a close-up of a fresh pressing.

[Reedy]

Speed holes make the car go faster.

[Nepharius]

Hmm isn't two intercoolers becoming overly complex? Why not just remove the stock one and replace it with a water/air intercooler?

As for peltier would need some way to cool the hot side wouldn't we? I do remember when we were playing with small ones at uni you run into issues where the hot side starts having an impact on the cold side because they are not completely thermally isolated. I'm not really up with this stuff but I do remember people were having problems cooling current CPUs (this was a few years ago) with peltier elements and I figure an intercooler produces a lot more heat than that. When higher efficiency peltier elements are made it would definitely become viable, but I'm not sure elements powerful enough exist yet.

Worst case for a peltier system atm would probably be you strap a few onto the side of your water reservoir and ambient engine bay temps don't allow them to dissapate heat (resulting in both sides warming up) so in the end they just drain your battery and heat your water. Although if better elements exist today I would be quite interested. I know its a complete tangent but I've always wanted to build a cooling system into the cup holders near the gearstick and peltiers are almost perfect. The need to cool the hot side somehow kind of killed the idea

Also for below ambient intercooling alcohol/water injection would be something to look into. It's quite compact main disadvantage is that you use up water and alcohol.

[Nexus]

Re: Twin IC - not necessarily that complex; potentially shorter less convoluted path than FMIC. Why air:air into water:air? Best of both worlds. First we go through the air:air, letting go of a significant portion of the thermal load. All of the thermal load when air:air is all you've got. Then, already cooled as well as a hgih-flow air:air such as ETS can, it passes through ultra-low pressure drop water:air. So we get the lowest possible BAT, and minimize load on the water:air.

Why minimize water:air load? Because we want to try and get the coolant and BAT below ambient. If wasn't trying to do that, a single water:air would be the go.

Retaining air:air first means our thermoelectric heat exchanger that is our water:air cooler isn't handling the full load of intercooling - it's job is to pick up the slack from the TMIC - and then reduce temps as much as practical beyond that.

Peltier elements are available up to 512W each. I'm thinking 4 of, well below 100% duty cycle. On demand; duty cycle depends on monitoring and how one programs the control system, and how agressively you try to pump heat from the coolant. Peltiers will work efficiently with the hot side liquid cooled. We have a coolant circuit already in the works so it is just a matter of paying attention to coolant flows.

a little 2000W fan heater blows enough hot air that if you put that in your intake, it would make a significant difference to performance. Same thing, in reverse. Remember the big loads for the system are dissipating heat after the TMIC has become heatsoaked, and the much smaller load of temperate corrections in response to WOT heat surges. Most of the time, once the coolant is at a desired temperature, we are not dissappating big loads. The below ambient coolant becomes a thermal sink - a buffer. That's probably the biggest load - priming the coolant temperature when system has returned to ambient. 4 x 500W peltiers should be able to do that quite quickly.

Myself, I have 36AH of reserve deepcycle battery, and I'd be able to monitor power usage. Stack a vehicle with all this sort of thing, and one might need to find a 200A alternator...

I like it as a design that doesn't consume fluids/evaporatives to get augmented boost cooling.

If there's not enough room, I'd consider one on top, but I figure the ETS can probably be modded to exit air on the other side, letting us put this in between TMIC and TB. If we can fit FMIC, I reckon space can be found for a compact water:air with a shorter path than FMIC.

Hmm isn't two intercoolers becoming overly complex? Why not just remove the stock one and replace it with a water/air intercooler?

As for peltier would need some way to cool the hot side wouldn't we? I do remember when we were playing with small ones at uni you run into issues where the hot side starts having an impact on the cold side because they are not completely thermally isolated. I'm not really up with this stuff but I do remember people were having problems cooling current CPUs (this was a few years ago) with peltier elements and I figure an intercooler produces a lot more heat than that. When higher efficiency peltier elements are made it would definitely become viable, but I'm not sure elements powerful enough exist yet.

Also for below ambient intercooling alcohol/water injection would be something to look into. It's quite compact main disadvantage is that you use up water and alcohol.

[Nepharius]

Would be interesting to see if something like this would be feasible. How much does a 512W peltier cost? Control circuitry could be pretty simple, a microcontroller hooked up to relays and a temp sensor. The kind of stuff you could probably grab from jaycar and program yourself for $20 or so. Then need a reasonable reservoir of water in a metallic container with the 4 elements stuck on the outside. After that you'd want a cooling block for each and another seperated water system with its own reservoir and pump and I assume radiator. Then you need that radiator to keep your secondary water cool, because if it isnt sufficient to cool the peltier system they stop cooling your intercooler water and start heating it. That's worst case scenario really, not sure what conditions would need to be to cause it. On the upside unlike a computer system condensation on the cold side isnt an issue!

So from what I see the system adds something along the lines of
W 2 A Intercooler and associated piping
1st water reservoir for intercoolers water
1st pump for intercooler water
4 peltiers and associated wiring and control system
2nd water reservoir for cooling peltiers
2nd pump for peltiers water
radiator for cooling peltier water.

I reckon a 200A+ alternator would be a good idea if you are running 2000W+ of peltiers because at peak they would use 150+Amps on there own, even if only for quite short durations.


Probably the most important question is how much power would extra cooling get you. I can tell you now that cooling with water/meth in our car nets you a loss of .5kw on the dyno (unless you tune on more timing in which case you can get an extra 7 or so from memory however if the meth stops spraying your engine detonates itself to death). I assume cooler air offset by less air. With hopefully returns more obvious on a heatsoaked or more extended run which isn't visible on the dyno.


Would definitely be interesting to see this attempted, I'm not sure bang for buck would be there but it would be unique and interesting to see in action.

[Reedy]

And what power gain would you expect to get out of this? 2000W of peltiers means 2kW of power AT LEAST is coming from the engine via the alternator. all for a degree or 2 temp drop? No way will that be worth it. Water spray on the intercooler will be a must better solution.

[Nexus]

And what power gain would you expect to get out of this? 2000W of peltiers means 2kW of power AT LEAST is coming from the engine via the alternator. all for a degree or 2 temp drop? No way will that be worth it. Water spray on the intercooler will be a must better solution.

Actually, power drain would be well below 2000 watts. Again, well below 100% duty cycle. 100% duty cycle would freeze the coolant very quickly at full power. And we are talking, for arguments sake 10 degree or more drop, not 2. At full power you will have frost and ice forming in seconds.

Bear in mind that a FMIC can gain you 20Kw with no extra tuning or boost. It does this by giving you a denser, cooler charge.

Also consider that in suggested configuration even before you apply power to the peltier elements we are already cooling more effectively than TMIC alone and probably more effectively than FMIC : we should be able to better the FMIC gain of 20Kw.

[Grajy]

I never saw 20kw gain with my FMIC. But that's another can of worms.
How often are you on full boost for?.?.? One must take this into account. If this was for a race car, may not be a bad idea. But for a streeter, IMO, just not worth it.