air-to-freeon intercooler???

[Patrick Javert]

I was wondering, our air conditioners use freeon to cool off incoming air, so why not have an intercooler that used freeon? have a standard air-to-water intercooler(like the ones vortech sells w/ it's kits), but sealed up and filled w/ freeon. that will cool down incoming air substantially, possibly below ambient air temperature(outside air temp.) Just an idea.

[nova]

Hmmm... Interesting idea. I'm not sure how well that would work.

You could run higher boost because of the cooler intake temperatures but I'm not sure if the power gain would outweigh the power loss from having to run the compressor off the drivebelt.

[strobhen]

might as well run air-to-water & put ice in the water when you go to the track.

water absorbs a lot of heat, probably wouldn't be worth it.

or you could try alcohol/water (a mix) injection. when it evaporates it eats up a LOT of heat.

[Patrick Javert]

nova, what compressor are you talking about? If you are talking about a freeon compressor, there isn't one. I'm thinking of a sealed unit in which air flows through tubes that are surrounded by freeon, and that the freeon is encased by an outer housing that has a cap and/or drain so that when the freeon charge runs out, you can add more. Strobhen, I am trying to come up w/ a simple, low maintenance intercooler that has lower than ambient temperatures ALL THE TIME! Not just at the track. water/alcohol injection muct be re filled every so often, and the water must be soft or distilled or it will clog the injector itself. This is too much hassle for some. The freeon will stay cold for a long period of time. By being able to run w/ a smaller intercooler, there will be less piping to run, quicker boost realization, and more room to work in the engine bay. air-to-water intercooling is unnessisarily heavy and robs power by needing to use a pump, and air-to-air intercooling can get very big, very fast as well as possibly causing cooling issues by feeding the radiator hot air, or if placed behind the radiator, not provide as much a cooling effect as desired.

[nova]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Patrick Javert:
nova, what compressor are you talking about? If you are talking about a freeon compressor, there isn't one.<hr></blockquote>

The freon won't do any good unless you use an AC like system with a compressor. The only reason freon cools in an AC is that heat is first added to make it hot and high pressure. It is then cooled. After it is cooled it is allowed to expand which lowers the temp more. At that point it is lower than room temp which allows it cool.

The only reason freon is used is because it has a fairly high vapor point.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Patrick Javert:
I'm thinking of a sealed unit in which air flows through tubes that are surrounded by freeon, and that the freeon is encased by an outer housing that has a cap and/or drain so that when the freeon charge runs out, you can add more. Strobhen, I am trying to come up w/ a simple, low maintenance intercooler that has lower than ambient temperatures ALL THE TIME! Not just at the track. water/alcohol injection muct be re filled every so often, and the water must be soft or distilled or it will clog the injector itself. This is too much hassle for some. The freeon will stay cold for a long period of time. By being able to run w/ a smaller intercooler, there will be less piping to run, quicker boost realization, and more room to work in the engine bay. air-to-water intercooling is unnessisarily heavy and robs power by needing to use a pump, and air-to-air intercooling can get very big, very fast as well as possibly causing cooling issues by feeding the radiator hot air, or if placed behind the radiator, not provide as much a cooling effect as desired. <hr></blockquote>

A sealed canister of freon won't do much good. Freon is a gas at standard atmospheric conditions. To have it as a liquid it would have to be cooled in the above manner or be under high pressure. As a gas it will just absorb more and more heat until it is the same temp as the incoming air. To remedy that you would have to route it to its own air to air intercooler to cool it off. Even as a liquid you would have to cool it like that to keep it from vaporizing. As a liquid it can't absorb nearly as much heat as water can before it vaporizes. At the point that you are having to use an air to air intercooler for your cooling medium you are just as well off running a standard air to air intercooler.

[Patrick Javert]

what about using the a/c compressor already on the car? where I'm moving to, it never gets above 85, and it's always windy. just re-route the hoses to the intercooler.

[nova]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Patrick Javert:
what about using the a/c compressor already on the car? where I'm moving to, it never gets above 85, and it's always windy. just re-route the hoses to the intercooler.<hr></blockquote>

You could do that. Thats what I thought your initial plan was. I just don't know if the power from the higher boost level would outweigh the load of the compressor. It would be something you would just have to try to see.

[MustangEater8251]

I am not going to be of help but a ong time ago in aother board, I read about somethign like this and it was proven not to be effective. I forgot how, but a good reasoning, I am sure peopel would be doing it somewhere if it was useful.

[jmorgan]

one reason on our cars to why it wont work is because the compresser disengages at WOT

[strobhen]

As said before, running freon w/ out a compressor doesn't work because freon eats up heat the same way alcohol injection does. By evaporating from a liquid to a gas, and it is then recompressed.

Run the A/C compressor on the car, and besides it disengaging at WOT, you also rob engine power, plus, you must cool that freon, and then you are dumping heat right back onto the engine. Unless if you swapped around the radiators.

A well designed & placed air-to-air intercooler is plenty for most applications, and then bumping up to alcohol injection if you really want to get risky :) At least, this works for 600+ hp GN's.

Air to water is better, but for the trouble, you might as well inject. Why? Because evaporating anything takes up a lot of heat. Not only must you get the material to its boiling point, but you also must dump in more energy past that to actually get the material to change state. You can actually cool water to below room temperature if you set up an evaporative cooling system (use a showerhead to spray water into a tube & use a fan to pass fresh air over it). Its a little maintenance, sure, but many overclockers use it to cool their computer.

All that being said, if you are bent on freon cooling, you could get an electric compressor, but then you might need to upgrade your alt to run it all the time.

Good luck whatever you do

[L337-RS]

If you really wanted to save weight and space, and had some fabrication skills and money to spend, you can use a nifty little device called a thermo-electric heat pump. They can be found for use on microprocessors. What they do is when an electric current is applied to them, one side becomes very very cold, and the other becomes very very hot, but they aren't very big, and they are pretty expensive, but if one were to make a pneumatic radiator of sorts, with a bunch of these on it, it could probably cool the incoming air quite a bit, provided it had enough contact with a cold surface.

[Backfire]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr> You can actually cool water to below room temperature if you set up an evaporative cooling system (use a showerhead to spray water into a tube & use a fan to pass fresh air over it). <hr></blockquote>

Like cooling towers on powerplants. Ambient air is blown in through the bottom of a tower, and water from the cooling system is sprayed into the top of the tower. There are normally a lot of baffles in the tower to aid in surface area and to keep the water in the tower longer. The hot air then escapes to the atmosphere, and the water is cycled back into the cooling system. The air extracts the heat from the water as it passes the drips. There is also some evaporation that aids in cooling, but also means water must be added to maintain the same level, but much is reused. They seem to work better in larger scales though, I don't know how feasible the system would be in an automobile.

[daWhoady]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr> You can actually cool water to below room temperature if you set up an evaporative cooling system (use a showerhead to spray water into a tube & use a fan to pass fresh air over it) <hr></blockquote>

We might as well go with a water/alcohol injection then.

[StockV6Cam]

What if you used his orignal idea and used liquid nitrogen instead? I'm assuming the same principles would apply and it would just cool the air charge to a certain point.

[strobhen]

An evaporative tower would be a very bad idea for an automobile. It is an open system by design & just doesn't cater to how automobiles work.

Peltier is also a bad idea (Thermo-electric heat pump). They pull a lot of power and are rather unreliable. Plus, you must cool the other side even better than what the peltier is cooling. Rather innefficient.

Finally liquid nitro, uhm, no... Try to find a pump that would pump that. You could try to gravity feed it, but I can just imagine a few drops hitting the block and the whole dang thing cracking.

KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) [img]tongue.gif[/img] Lets avoid overly exotic stuff.