Ive been thinking about water air intercooling and was thinking why stop at 32* water? So far ive thought about adding rubbbing alcohol to water and using dry ice if you vent off the co2. Any of you chemisty guys know of a good heat conducting liquid that has a low sub 0 frezing temp? Any other ideas for either the liquid or the frozen substance to cool it? Or just a better anti-freze substance that dosent lower heat exhcange as in rad anti-freze.

Eric

Remember, it has to be compatible with the core material, the plumbing materials, and the pump, whatever the cooling media may be.

Mike

If you're going to go through the logistics of setting up some intricate air:liquid intercooling system with subzero liquid cooling temps, I think the same effect could be had with a lot less effort, less money, and better results by just going with a small shot of NOS.

A small NOS would be advantageous to your above setup for the following reasons:
1. A bottle of NOS will far outlive dry ice. Less maintenance.
2. NOS will cool your intake temps colder than an air:liquid setup could
3. Besides the cooling effect, the NOS has the fuel enrichening effect
4. cheaper
5. easier to setup
6. more power

The main reason people stray from the concept of NOS as a gaseous intercooler is they are afraid of the double power adder setup. While it can be dangerous, and a biotch to tune, that's exactly all it is... it's ALL in the tuning. It CAN be made to run safely and effectively with a good margin of safety.

Just my .02 but I think a small shot of NOS will give you what you are looking for with a lot less headaches.

The IPA (rubbing alcohol) and dry ice mixture gets to a temp of about -85 deg C. I worked at a chemical factory for a while and the chemists used this all the time keeping reactions cold. I would think that straight antifreeze would work so long as it is constantly circulating.

Bill

I looked into this, (running alcohol and dry ice, and running liquid nitrogen.) The problem inlies with the charge getting too cold. Talking with some of the guys who have run these systems on turbo motors the problem comes with the charge being too cold and freezing the fuel. The fuel then drops out of the spray pattern and then causes hot spots of the pistons. Then detonation... I really liked the alchy/dry ice idea but they (major racers laurence connely etc...)all came back with just run icewater.

Steven

What about converting the core of the cooler to carry R13 refrigerant (or similar) and just plumbing it into your existing air conditioning unit? It would essentially become another condenser (or evap, I get them confused). You could put a one way check valve with a tee off the AC pump so it would become independant of the HVAC system of the car. I've thought about this before, but I don't know enough about how AC works to figure out the details. I know the AC lines on a car can get pretty frosty!

Mike

The thing I would see about is how much heat energy can the a/c system pull out. The people i would talk to about this is possibly a refrigeration repair shop or something similar to that. See what they have to say.

Steven

If you combine the fact that the A/C compressor won't appreciate being under a load at 6000 rpm, with the fact that the parasitic drag of the compressor will negate the gains of a lower intake temperature, I don't think it's a good idea.


Mike

I think all GM's built after like 1983 has a full throttle dis-engage switch on the compressor. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm just curious if the compressor could get the refrigerant cold enough during part throttle/idle, to keep the core cool enough through a full 1/4 mi. run etc.. I'm not even sure how cold the refrigerant gets under normal working conditions. Does anyone know?

Mike

You bring up a good point. Many drag racers believe that the air-to-air intercoolers act more as a mass of cool metal that absorbs the heat of the boosted charge, moreso than the ambient air passing on the outside of the core. So, get the core down to 30 degrees, and allow the cool metal to absorb the heat.

The Freon temperature is dependent on the A/C compressor discharge pressure. This is controlled by the pressure switches in the system that cycle the compressor on and off. The stock pressure switch settings keep the Freon above 32 degrees so condensed water vapor doesn't freeze on the outside of the evaporator core and block air flow.

Mike

So as long as the pressure is regulated from the compressor to keep the refrigerant at say, 20 degrees, that should be good enough to keep the core at a livable temp. I doubt that the inside of the charged side of the cooler would ever develop ice to restrict flow. Even modest boost levels produce enough heat to keep the ice/frost under control. It may, however, produce condensation, but I don't think that would yield a bad effect. I wonder if the AC/cold side of the cooler would ever frost up enough to become plugged though. That might be a bad effect.

I don't know enough about thermal dynamics and heat exchange rates to make an accurate assumption on any of this though. Just an idea I think might deserve a bit more research at this point. Who knows, maybe I'm on to something.

Mike

This is just kind of a crazy idea I just had, and it's probably no good, but I figure I'll spit it out anyhow.

I've seen, in a few instances, people spraying N2O directly out of the bottle onto the intake manifold between races.

So then I thought, why not set up some nitrous jets to spray nitrous through the air-to-air intercooler, and cool it this way? You could also control it manually this way.

Then I thought, there's really no point in using nitrous oxide, as any inert compressed gas would work, since they all cool as they expand. So why not set up something resembling a dry N2O system, with some big *** jets spraying through the air-to-air, running CO2 (since it's cheap and widely available).

Am I insane or am I on to something here?

Pull out your most recent issue of Jeg's High Performance and look at the NX Nitrous kits. They have what they call the N-ter Cooler. It is exactly what you're talking about. It even includes a fancy spray bar that will spray a large portion of the intercooler.

However, I've always said that nitrous will do you more good spraying IN the motor instead of ON the intercooler.

Mike

Then you can check out http://web.camaross.com/forums/showt...threadid=92932
We have been talking about this same CO2 injection there

Hey, I'm not insane! Cool. So from what I'm reading, you can run CO2 through that n-tercooler thing, right?

I'd don't really read Jeg's catalogs. They screwed me once so I don't buy from them anymore. But I assume you could get this kit from any place that sells NX, right?