LOL, that's too funny. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees

 

You guys have seen what DEI is doing right????
http://designengineering.com/
I have talked to them and they said they were in the process of doing some Dyno's and would post them on there site!
We'll see!
Nick

 

Like anything that comes in a bottle, it will have a finite run time. Maybe good for the drags. I don't think one bottle would last a whole road course.

 

True,
Bottle's are not self sufficient.... However it is refreshing to see something new.
Question, would such a cooling device work at wide open throttle? I would think that some cooling time is required for the air/fuel to be cooled sufficiently if it is passing over or through a cooling device!

 

That cryo system looks like a good idea and it does not seem to be too heavy, I just wonder how long one bottle would last.

My system would be lighter, last longer but would not cool the air off as much.

 

It does make me wonder, though...all of us spend so much time trying to cool down the air charge, which moves very fast, shouldn't be restricted, and doesn't act as that great of a heat source (i.e., we need a REALLY efficient and/or large heat sink).

What about cooling the fuel? At a (roughly) 12:1 air to fuel ratio, we would need to cool the fuel down 12 times as much as the air to get the same power gain, but fuel, being a nice liquid, will be a much better heat source, doesn't move nearly as fast (which gives us more time to cool it down), and can wind through multiple pipes without causing a loss in fuel pressure (like the air charge would going through multiple bends and such). Gasoline has a pretty low freezing point (can someone please find the true value for 92-93 Octane, please?), which means we can really make the gas COLD.

Of course, if any of this throws off the combustion process by making the conditions non-ideal (such as when the engine isn't yet up to temp), all bets are off and I'm talking out of my ass

 

All I know is when you cool the fuel, you're really playing with fire. It becomes much more flammable and may not be a good idea.
As far a lowering air temps, everybody seems to have figured some sort of a new idea or another, but the truth is that when installing a cold air intake, the power increase has nothing to do with cold air!!!!
Surprise? That's a major misnomer.
The power in a cai comes from the internal harmonics of the "pipe". What happens is that sonic waves bounce off the walls at a certain rate and the "wave" starts compounding. Like a guitar that has a harmonic on the 12th fret, 7th fret and the 5th fret, the air pipe also has harmonics in different orders (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc.) With a cai, these harmonics happen at different rpm's (air flow) depending on the length of the pipe. That's why shorter air pipes tend to favor more high rpm increase, wheras longer pipes tend to favor lower -- but if the pipe is long enough, the 2nd order of harmonics can also be realized before running out of revs. This is why cai is such an important mod on our cars -- we have such a long rpm range to take advantage of different harmonics. When a harmonic occurs, it's like a supercharger effect, more air gets crammed into the engine.

 

Cooler air is more dense, so you get more cool air into the combustion chamber than warm air. With more air, you can burn more fuel releasing more energy producing more HP.

The fuel is metered into the combustion chamber based on the air intake temperature and pressure. The colder the air or the higher the intake pressure, the more fuel the engine computer will add to the combustion chamber. Cooling the fuel does not significantly affect its density since it is already a liquid.

 

That's true, but the amount you pick up from JUST the temp difference is very minimal. The effect that resonance has on ram air effect is huge.

 

OK, let's look at the arithmetic of lowering the temperature of the incoming air to below ambient temperature.

2-liter engine. 6,000 rpm (After first gear, you'd be revving or downshifting so you could rev if you cared about power.) Cylinder fills every second revolution of the crankshaft. Let's assume 90% volumetric efficiency, because it's my post and that's the number I pulled out of my @$$.

(2liters * 6000rpm/2)*.9 = 5400 liters/minute. Divide by 60sec/min and get 90 liters/sec of air that our engine is consuming.

Now, since it's my post, I'm going to say that the cooler has an area equivalent to 15cm diameter (about 6 inches.) (With fins inside, the real diameter would be much larger, but let's assume that it flows the same as a 15cm diameter tube.) 7.5cm**2*3.14 = 176.7 sq cm area.

Our 90 liters/sec of air is 90,000 cubic cm of air per second. With our 176.6 cm sq cm clear area, we've got an air velocity of 509.6 cm/sec. This is about 200 inches/sec.

Now, do some guestimates on temperature differential between the cooling fins and the incoming air, the efficiency of heat transfer between the two, etc. My guestimates conclude that the cooler has to be pretty long to keep the air in contact with it long enough to significantly lower the air's temperature.

Yes, I do understand that intercoolers and aftercoolers work on blown engines. However, keep in mind that they're exchanging heat from the compressed intake air with water or air that is at at least ambient temperature. They're lowering the air temperature towards ambient, but never getting it that low.

Injecting something to get cooling by change of state (liquid to gas) will definitely lower intake air temperature, but if what you're injecting has less available oxygen than air, you may lower power not increase it.

I'm not saying that someone can't come up with something that does indeed work. I'm just saying that it won't be easy and the winner will make a ton of money off licensing fees, etc.