Armchair Engineering: cold charge air edition

May take this to /diy/ but I know there are a few people here that know their stuff.

Air to air (henceforth simply "intercooler") vs air to water intercoolers (I'm gonna call these "charge coolers")

Generally, as I understand it, charge coolers are more efficient than intercoolers due to water having roughly 4x the specific heat as air. In addition, they typically have smaller overall intake volumes compared to intercoolers which helps maintain boost and lessen lag. Water is of course a double edged sword due to it's ability to absorb and retain heat. But, I don't see why controlling the temperature of the water used to cool the charge would be difficult with the proper peripheral systems. This leads me to my questions:

>Why aren't they used more?
>What is the best way to implement one: using the engine cooling system or a standalone system?
>ice tanking charge coolers is common amongst drag racers and land speed cars, implying refrigeration is rad. So why couldn't you use existing A/C systems to double as or be repurposed as refrigerators for charge cooler water?
>would the parasitic loss of power from the above idea be overcome by the reduction of charge temperature?

Talk about keeping shit cold in here.

This thread is stupid.

Ur mom is stupid

intercooler = pov spec normie stage mod copycat
chargecooler = knows what their doing

Charge coolers are sleeper as fuck too. You aren't advertising anything.

Have thought about this before.

-It's expensive to have air-water coolers.
-Integrated into the intake manifold (ie plenum)
-I'd like to see the AC compressor activate during deceleration and idle to pre-cool a volume of the charge coolers coolant. Even if the HVAC evap is not calling for refrigerant it can be isolated by a simple solenoid valve when the compressor runs for the charge cooler.

If the charge temperature reaches critical levels while accelerating and pushes the knock threshold too close, then the AC compressor can be activated during load, costing some power but ensuring safe engine operation.

water intercoolers will only work if the system can stay colder than the compressed air. this might be an issue if you tie the system to the engine cooling, so a separate system or greatly upgraded radiator and fluids. a separate refrigerant based system could work very well and not require as much work to set up.

I'm currently using a charge cooler on my boosted 370z, and it works amazing until the engine bay gets heat soaked and suddenly the water is pretty hot. It has its upsides, but like you said keeping the fluid cold is the problem.

Right now I'm looking into a bigger heat exchanger for the charge cooler, I use a separate system not associated with the radiator.

>>What is the best way to implement one: using the engine cooling system or a standalone system?
Is anyone retarded enough to think using the engine's cooling circuit is a good idea?
Has anyone done this in the history of cars?

>ice tanking charge coolers is common amongst drag racers and land speed cars, implying refrigeration is rad. So why couldn't you use existing A/C systems to double as or be repurposed as refrigerators for charge cooler water?
Because you're dealing with a metric shit ton of heat, enough to easily overwhelm any normal AC system.

>Is anyone retarded enough to think using the engine's cooling circuit is a good idea?Has anyone done this in the history of cars?
works fine in Death Valley in the summer, I see no problems :^)

>Is anyone retarded enough to think using the engine's cooling circuit is a good idea?
>Has anyone done this in the history of cars?
Yes. It doens't matter if it's connected to the main cooling system if the flow is correctly engineered. All that will happen is the main cooling system's pressure transfers into charge cooling circuit, which helps heat transfer, but the coolant systems heat never actually transfers to the charge cooling circuit.

Yes manufacturers do this.

WTA can have a problem with heat soak if its not placed low down in the engine bay

source: 3SGTE top-mounted WTA

>Because you're dealing with a metric shit ton of heat, enough to easily overwhelm any normal AC system.
Auto AC systems are grossly oversized. An Accord can have a 1 ton+ AC cooling system capacity.

The only real problem with a refrigerated cooling circuit is that the heat load is HIGHLY IRREGULAR and SPORADIC. Designing-in an adequate specific heat to the system will allow "thermal energy" or the lack thereof to be stored in a mass. Think of it as a heat capacitor.

which cars use the engine coolant system for chargecooling?

Correct. Shitty system design is the only real disadvantage to charge coolers.

the Jaguar AJ-V8 supercharged off the top of my head

holy fuck i know this engine
that's a Brabus-style intercooled Mercedes M275 Biturbo v12. Normally the engine comes with only two water to air intercoolers, the top left and right boxes.

However brabus chooses to add another two oem intercoolers instead of just adding a double sized one

very cool user thanks for posting

I worked at a vehicle dismantlers and I can distinctly remember Jags having a chargecooler radiator.

>armchair engineering
kek

Seems like a great way to add weight and complexity to an engine.

Yes of course, no manufacturer is going to use the main coolant radiator to cool WTA fluid lol. It it uses engine coolant in it's circuit and it's own circulator pump but while the cooling system and WTA system are connected, their fluids do not transfer. This is basically how all factory WTA systems work.

might be that the EPA won't let them use refrigerant in anything but the A/C system, so they go with antifreeze.

OP here
That's an interesting system. I'm picturing Raspberry Pi refrigerant controllers. Knock threshold could be dummy proofed by limp modes programmed into the ECU - kills boost when you get too hot. Lame but safe. The real question then is how effective could factory AC be at cooling the water. Augmented by of course an appropriate radiator plus fan and controller for the water.
The above words are relevant to your post too. The factory AC as a cooling system is a convenient idea. But other systems could be used as well - purpose built for cooling. But then you're getting into $$$. $/gain would be limiting probably. Is the extra 5% crank HP worth $2.5k? That sort of thing. I think for smaller, generally cooler motors, factory AC used to cool a charge cooler working off of an electric water pump could net gains, especially if the compressor is used efficiently during idle and decel as the user above mentioned.
First arrow
>I think that would depend on application, but for general use, yes, without a superb cooling system it wouldn't work, and then it may be too cold for optimal engine operation.
Second one
>refrigeration is just an idea. You may be completely correct, but also I'm going to say it depends on application. It wouldn't work as well on a 13b as it would an ecoboost because of ambient heat. However, there are plenty of examples of very successful cars running charge coolers with nothing more than radiators and moving air. If an Audi S1 used just that, then there had to be some merit to it. The concept is to use refrigerant to augment moving air, and whether or not the augmentation offers any net gain over the parasitic effect of the compressor.

On phone at work sorry for slow replies.

Note to self: insulate and isolate. True. This whole concept is simple, but the nuances can get tricky.
No problem user
Meh, no more than existing AC and air to air intercoolers. Just plumbing. Sure, electronics can get fancy, but we're armchair engineers, not good engineers. If any of this were production, any lines of code to control this system would just be shoved into the ECU programming somewhere. Yeah, weight would be a problem if the engine in question weren't spicy enough to benefit from the added heft. I feel that it would be more helpful than heavy once you reached a certain level of tune.

>just plumbing
Plumbing which is full of....

EPA repellant

Why not just use a water injection system?

has to be refilled often.

God Emperor Trump says global warming and ozone damage doesn't exist.

I think he was referring to the extra weight of the coolant

I was talking about the plumbing full of water. Which is much heavier than plumbing full of air.

Something like the pic in the OP would require about 50kW of intercooling at full chat.
Good luck trying to do that with an AC system.

Yeah, it would be heavier. I wish I could quantify this stuff. 2 gal capacity charge cooler system seems pretty conservative. That's more than most