OK so I thought I'd pose an idea here to see if peaks any interest or others are interested in trying this. Don't know how formative you want ideas but this is pretty early stage. So popular mods for NA and FI are CAI and intercoolers, designed to cool the air going into the engine. A bit of a novice here so feel free to correct my mistakes. By drawing cold air into the engine one reduces the chance of detonation and in theory provides more power since cold air expands with greater power than warm air.

A couple of questions, what is the limit for the air temp limits, i.e. how cold is too cold. If the air is too cold will it be more difficult to combust(i would think so) also are their condensation issues if the air is too cold.

So the reason I ask this is that there may be a technology that we can use to substantially decrease the temperature of air entering the engine. What I'm talking about is using thermo-electric cooling, also known as Peltier cooling. There are a bunch of decent web sites for those who want to learn more about it just google it. The short version is that you have a material that when electricity is run through it, makes one side very cold and the other side very hot.

Peltiers have been used as advanced cooling for overclocking CPUs. The cold side can reach temperatures below zero, but is controllable. You could use peltiers on either the radiator or on the aftercooler or elsewhere. There are challenges to making this work in practice since you still must cool the 'hot' side of the Peltier, but it should allow increased ability to cool the air entering the engine. Is it useful to have even colder air? Is the benefit mostly for FI or can NA take advantage of it also?

Just some thoughts, and hopefully can generate some discussion about the potential. Opinions?

 

This exact idea was discussed in a thread several years ago. I think the conclusion was that is was not practical for the volume of air that needs to be cooled. Maybe you have an updated analysis.

 

Gack noob error, forgot to search first....Doh... However after doing a quick search it doesn't seem to have gone very far. What I'm thinking about a first approach is not trying to do a complete peltier air cooled option(just too much surface area to try to cool) However what I'm looking at is trying too super cool the coolant going into the intercooler, either replacing or modifying the radiator. Still some challenges but may be more feasable. Thanks!

 

Peltiers are very inefficient. The amount of power (and in fact Peltier elements) required to cool the mass of air a vehicle like the S2000 uses is enormous.

The power loss from generating this electricity far exceeds the potential power increase from cooler air, not to mention the required array of peltier elements would fill a caravan.

 

Are you guys familiar with the new approach that Ford is using with the new Lightning pickup??

If I understand it correctly, they use the AC system to cool a coolant tank, then THAT coolant runs through the intercooler. I think they have enough for a 45second or so burst, then it needs to recharge.

This actually sounds like a very clever system that would be beneficial in short bursts.

Mark

 

Much better. I was gonna mention this.
Thermo Electric Cooling devices (I think) will be replaced by micro-fluidic devices. It's like our car's cooling system, but much smaller. Micro electro mechanical systems are becoming easier to produce and use, and I think the Peltier device is too inneficient to compete with these micro-pumps.

 

Yep Peltiers are less efficient than other systems but they have the nice property of having much greater reliabilty. Actually Peltiers are fairly efficient at cooling till ambient temputure is reached. They become less and less efficient once you need to cool below outside temps. Have looked at some of the prior discussion that has been done here and it seems that there has been an inprovement in the Peltier's ability to pump heat, i.e. almost 4X from what was quoted two years ago. Still not sure if it is enough(and I am worred about power consumption, too) but it might be possible.

The big question I have, is what temp drop from the current matters, is 10-20 degrees better good enough or do you need 60+ degrees less. Also is this mostly for FI or can NA really benefit?

Still looking into it unless the temps needed to make a difference are huge?

Also maybe it is enough to have a resevoir of super chilled liquid to use on demand for a quick burst, like the ford approach. This way you could chill it slowly and use less power(and get greater temp diff)

 

I looked at thermoelectric coolers a few years back as a potential alternative to an air conditioning unit in a vehicle. The idea would be to pull the moisture out of the air and cool it enough to defog the windows in humid weather.

Well, I had to drop the idea because of the electrical demands to make it work. Here's an example: to get 160-200 BTU rating (depending on how efficient it is at that particular temperature), you would have to draw approximately 12 amps at 12 volts. With the volume of air that you're trying to cool, 200 BTU would hardly get noticed. You would likely need somewhere well over 2000 BTU to make an impact (consider the cooling capacity of a 2000 BTU window air conditioner) which would take somewhere around 120 amps. That would be a large parasitic drag on the engine (requiring an extra heavy duty alternator), and still only raise the temperature of the incoming air a few degrees.
Ref: http://www.thermoelectric.com/2002/pr/ssac.../ahp/index.html

There are better ways of cooling the intake air.

 

Use liquid nitrogen; cheap, easy to get and safe (assuming you don't pour it on yourself).

 

Yrah, and don't forget to leave the container top unscrewed...ever seen a dewer of liq. N2 explode? Cool site, but you don't want to be in the car when it happens