Crazy Intercooler idea

[CTX-SLPR]

Sometimes the oddest ideas come at night. I was just thinking about the rules of the new Hot Rod Pump Gas Drags and the restriction to pump gas, nitrous, and water for consumable fluids. While thinking about a 6.0L Gen III iron truck block with L76/92 heads and 2 turbos in a 4dr Nova wagon and how to intercool it I randomly hit on a bizzarre idea. Its not totally new and the very thing might have been proposed before and I just don't know about it. Thinking from the thermodynamics of an refriderent system I was originally thinking using the Nitrous to cool the water reservoir and then I thought why not cool the air directly with the nitrous using an expansion valve setup like in an AC evaporator core? Since you are using N2O as a refridgerant and its compressed off the car it will not consume engine power when being throttled across the expansion valve. The question is how much nitrous would be needed and what kind of energy consumption would the pressure drop consume to cool the intake charge down to the 40's or so. If you'd consume a whole tank a run its not really worth it for anything other than the finals but if its something you can consume about as fast as a regular N2O car does it might not be too bad for street strip guys who use an Air-to-Air normally on the street with lower boost and have this be used for the race track.

More mad musings from a bored and gearhead physicist,

 

[notacarlo]

7

 

[CTX-SLPR]

What? AC creates cool air by creating a pressure drop and volume expansion via a process known as throttling. Freon is compressed, cooled till it condenses, and then throttled and it cools the evaporator core which then cools the air. The freon carries away the heat as a gas and is then compressed again.... cycle continues.
In this situation you use nitrous as the refriderant (freon), the tank filling station as the compressor, same principle but different calibrated throttling valve or POA orifice, and the intercooler as the evaporator core and the intake charge as the ambient air.
The question is how much energy can nitrous going from pressure A out of the bottle down to ambient through the valve absorb per unit flow and how much air is moved in the intake charge to specify how much heat needs to be absorbed to set the flow rate.

 

[notacarlo]

My contribution to this thread is the number 7. Only becasuse what you are describing is WAAAY over my head.

I'm glad that someone else is doing the thinking. Make it work, and people will probably buy it.

 

[turbobob924]

Why not just try a IC spray bar that shoots No2 or O2 thru the IC to cool it!?

 

[tthorngen]

you would gain more by just using the nos as everyone else does. either that or place 10 cans of canned air upside down with strings tied to the trigger pointing at the intercooler. :-P

 

[VadersV6]

None of this is necessary with alcohol injection. Not uncommon to see charge temps drop to the 40's with a good system...and it also adds additional energy.
Theres a company that makes Co2 sprayers that mount on whatever you want to mount it on. Most people mount the spray bars to the intercooler and get a good chill. But the whole industry is bull****. It doesnt work and never has. People used to use nitrous to chill the IC's, and people would gain alot of hp..like 45-50hp...turned out the gases were being injested into the intake. On the dyno, If they'd run a long tube to a hole in the wall and run it to the air's intake tube, and then do the tests, the chilling of the IC would gain about 9-10hp on a 300hp motor. Co2 displaces the normal injected air, and it extinguishes the flame, and always loses hp if the filter ingests any.

 

[Grumpy]

can't use Alky @ the Hot Rod Pump Gas Drags

 

[tthorngen]

sure you can. just hide it... im sure you can fit the setup into a battery shell

 

[Grumpy]

sure you can. just hide it... im sure you can fit the setup into a battery shell

where there is a will there is a way have a dummy NOS bottle in the trunk and use those lines for the alky

 

[tthorngen]

reminds me of the days when i would put 1/2 dollars in the wooden slot cars :-D

 

[turbofabricator]

Inject the alky through tiny holes drilled into the coolant passages in the throttle body. Keep the alky in the heater box and use the heater tubes to supply the alky to the TB. The pump and tank can be in the heater box and add some green food coloring to the alcohol and everyone will think it's anti-freeze. Drill a bunch of very small holes all over the inside of the TB so they look like casting porosities. Many ways to skin a cat. (not sure why ANYONE would want to skin a cat, though.) Talk with NHRA Pro Stock guys to find out where they hide their Nitrous these days. :tongue:

 

[bsdlinux]

There was a guy in Houston years back that made an intercooler that was water to air, well actually he used Dynalene. It had a reesvoir tank, pump and used and expansion valve setup off the AC to cool the Dynalene liquid.

The intake charge was down in the 40s and some guy that lives in Vegas on this board used have one on his basic stock car. The performance gain was incredible for obvious reasons.

I actually talked to the old man that did the fab on these. The guy that came up with the idea had pass a few years back. The fabricator said he had one left and would sell it to me but I didn;t have the money at the time.

At the track it was no problem. Run the AC in the pits and prechill the liquid side of things. Plenty of volume to make the whole run without using the AC and getting in trouble for putting water on the track.

Basically this system was a piggyback on your AC, but it came with a bigger reciever that allowed for the extra capacity.

Oh yeah if I had one of these on my E-85 car, I would probably have to thaw out the engine after a run Hell since I'm thinking about it, people that have used alky injection know about the cooling effects..hahah you should see the E-85 in action as it is directly injected into the combustion chamber...

 

[CTX-SLPR]

Well first, as interesting as your ideas are....
"I will not Lie, Cheat, nor Steal, nor will we tollerate anyone amoung us who does. Furthermore I pledge to live honorably" I may not be a cadet anymore but I'm sticking to that, so no cheating.
Secondly this is as much a mental bounce off as it is a product design.

Alky is good and well prooven I know, not going to dispute that and I still plan on running it on my Turbo6 powered '64 Riviera. However I like mental projects like this and I know the intercooler sprayers don't really work that well because you aren't getting very good fluid dwell time on the surface of the tubes and the dilution of the cooling charge with air and the possiblity of intake ingestion either choking or fortifying the airstream. What I'm talking about it to do a simular setup to what bsdlinux is saying to the level of direct cooling not resivour chilling (by the way I'm Central TEXAS Sleeper because I' from Pflugerville originally). I don't know if its practical or economical but I thought I'd work it out a bit in my head and on the board. I need to find an AC expert and find out much CFM an AC system moves and what the mass flow rate of freon is through the evaporator core. I've got a friend who's a semi-thermodynamicist for the USAF back that the propulsion research lab looking into the specific heat, phase change energy, and the triple point diagram of nitrous. I like this stuff so if anyone wants to join in the fun I'd love to have you on board. I'd like an electronics engineer too to help me work on my PnP wastespark eliminator.

 

[Turbo1dr]

There was a guy in Houston years back that made an intercooler that was water to air, well actually he used Dynalene. It had a reesvoir tank, pump and used and expansion valve setup off the AC to cool the Dynalene liquid.

The intake charge was down in the 40s and some guy that lives in Vegas on this board used have one on his basic stock car. The performance gain was incredible for obvious reasons.

I actually talked to the old man that did the fab on these. The guy that came up with the idea had pass a few years back. The fabricator said he had one left and would sell it to me but I didn;t have the money at the time.

At the track it was no problem. Run the AC in the pits and prechill the liquid side of things. Plenty of volume to make the whole run without using the AC and getting in trouble for putting water on the track.

Basically this system was a piggyback on your AC, but it came with a bigger reciever that allowed for the extra capacity.

Oh yeah if I had one of these on my E-85 car, I would probably have to thaw out the engine after a run Hell since I'm thinking about it, people that have used alky injection know about the cooling effects..hahah you should see the E-85 in action as it is directly injected into the combustion chamber...

I've thought about that idea myself.... liquid intercooler with the A/C system chilling the water going to it.

 

[bsdlinux]

I've thought about that idea myself.... liquid intercooler with the A/C system chilling the water going to it.

I have many years experience with HVAC and refrigeration and the systems that control them, be it digital , analog, etc..

I can tell you it wouldn't be hard at all to set this up. The great thing is that you could use just the plain old stock core intercooler ( plenty of those around ), you really wouldn't need anything bigger. Obviously you'd want to upgrade the neck but seriously that setup would be good enough to crack a S2 block.

Set the expansion valve to about 28 degrees or so for your glycol solution and you'll have all the cold air you would need.

The easy cheesy way is to buy a used water to air cooler system and just refrigerate the liquid side and your done. If I remember correctly a few of our SY/TY friends have done this already.

There are other people that have done similar setups that I've found on the internet.

EDIT: I've found the old link: Refrigerated Intercoolers

 

[Turbo1dr]

That would be the easiest way I think also. All you would need to add is an expansion valve with a coil of tubes installed in the water tank.

 

[ChavoLC2]

AC use

Didn't Ford do that on the Lightning use AC and expansion valve to chill pre cooler. Your ideas are great to utilize AC it would seem like it would coolit off till you hit WOT and ECM turned the compressor off.

 

[CTX-SLPR]

Think you could piggy back this onto an Air-to-Air system so you get passive intercooling most of the time and then kick this on when you want it? I'd love to have a PS FMIC for normal stuff then this weighting in reserve for more serious runs but then Alky would probably be a better choice, though this is closed system and alky is a consumable. The switch is the need to "pregame" this system so its not instant stoplight drag material. bsdlinux, is the R4 compressor on the LC2 up to continuous usage like the old A6 compressor or must it be pulsed to prolong its life?
The only problem with this for PGD is that you'd have to run the engine and that eats fuel, the other solution would be to run an electric refridgerant compressor and have it sitting on the sidelines during the event to take the weight out of the vehicle but still have a compressor to use.

 

[turbodave231]

Think about this: Take an decent intercooler core (like a PTE FM) and build a sealed "box" around the core.

Instead of circulating cold water around the core, you build in a spray bar/orifice/expansion device to flood the box and core with R-134A. You supply the R-134A from a 10 lbs. can activated with a solenoid.

You attach a large empty reservior to the box.....say like a 30 lb tank.

Before your pass, you pull a vacuum on the intercooler box and the reservoir to 28 in hg. You do your burnout and activate the system just as you stage the car. The large vacuum reserve should continue to pull the Refrigerant into the intercooler and accumulate the gas phase refrigerant for at least the entire pass.......maybe more. Adjust the size of the reservoir as needed.

I'm thinking inlet temps in the 35 degree range for the entire pass.

Return to the pits and hook up to the recovery equipment and recover the R-134A and pull the system into a vacuum for the next pass. No compressor needed. No big tank of water (extra weight) and no ice!!

Yes, Hot lapping would be out of the question and you would need a recovery station (which I already have). Plumbing would be simple!!

Sound Crazy??