New ideas

[zekew64]

I had a brilliant idea last night. Actually, a couple of them.

First, why has no company ever built a combination intercooler/radiator for any vehicle? I thought about design like this: First, the engine coolant tubing is staggered and rearward of the turbocharged air tubing. This dual-tubing setup is also separated by an intermediate level of vanes (thin metal strips) that attempt to insulate each set of tubes from each other. The advantage is that with this kind of setup, you could have a turbo but not have to finagle where you put the intercooler to cool the turbo air down.

Second idea (Rough Theory): Turn your A/C compressor into an Intake Air Cooler! The idea is this: Just like a moonshine still turns alcohol vapor into liquid by cooling it, you can use the refrigerant in your A/C system to increase HP by cooling your intake air down (even in NA systems). Basically, take high pressure A/C tubing and spiral-wrap it around the intake duct between the air filter and TB. The idea is a tube-within-a-tube: the first (inner tube) is connected by the rubber stock air ducting connectors, being the same diameter as the stock polymerized plastic ducting. Around this tubing is a secondary, outer cylindrical housing tube that carries the A/C tubing that is spiraled around the inner tube.

I haven't gotten hard figures, like air volume or safe intake air temperature (the idea that denser, cooler air allows for a richer A/F mixture, resulting in more power), for which a temperature over distance rate could be calculated. I'm thinking that this setup could be made using a modified fitting from the compressor, to a second fitting for the spiralled air intake tubing, to a third fitting that allows low-pressure, high volume refrigerant to cycle back to the compressor. The outer housing tubing would have to be made out of aluminum, to be able to dissipate the heat from the cooled down intake air. Or, you could leave the spiralled intake tubing exposed to the engine bay heat, thus acting like the radiator in the A/C system. Also, I'm thinking that since heated fluids (including air) expands, the low pressure return tubing would have to be larger, in order to accommodate a greater refrigerant volume moving through a given diameter at a given temperature.

But, there you have it: Two ideas (You heard 'em here first!) that may well change the automotive world

 

[RonD]

Turbo compressed air can run 250-350degF.
Even with high outside air temp of 100degF, if is better for cooling than 170-220degF radiator temp being near by.
You would also be adding the intercooler heat loss temp to rad cooling air, so would need a much bigger rad to keep engine from running too hot

Also just the added level of replacement cost if rad or intercooler should fail, both have to be replaced.


Ford patented an intercooler that used Freon and AC compressor.
AC compressor can not cool the volume of air passing thru turbo system or even NA engine, physics just don't work.
Your AC fan on high cooling inside of the cab or car is a very low volume of air, just feel the air volume coming out tail pipe at idle, then think of it at 2,000rpm, and then turbo'ed, no comparison.
And cab AC temp needs to be circulated temp getting lower and lower to work well, i.e. turn AC on full, fan on full then roll down the window on 100degF day and see how low temp in cab goes, lol.

What Ford did was to cool a volume of water down to near freezing temps with the AC system.
Theory was you would push a button on the dash and this water would be pumped thru intercooler dropping air temp for about 15second, boosting HP by about 50, then it would take about 5-10 minutes to cool down the water again.
While interesting it wasn't very practical for daily drivers.