Re: Home made intercooler

[Lawrence C Leung <l.leung@juno.com>]

Common trick for Autocrossers with IC Turbo cars, water soaked gauze in
front of the IC, water spray onto the IC etc. Obviously doesn't work over
a long period of time.  Water injection has also been used quite
successfully for automotive applications. Don't know of any sources off
the top of my head, I'd suggest an internet search. H2O injection even
works on aspros with hot intakes or high compression.


On Mon, 6 Dec 1999 17:30:30 -0800 Randy McCall <randym@schiller.com>
writes:
>If you want to cool the air stream in a big way, and you want to make 
>your 
>own IC, I would suggest some sort of indirect evaporative cooling 
>approach 
>for a single pass IC.  Something as simple as a fine mist controlled 
>and 
>optimized for expected IC surface temperatures can reduce the dreaded 
>heat 
>soak and fool your turbo into thinking it's a cool day.  Another 
>approach 
>that may work just as well, but will not address static pressure 
>losses in 
>a two pass IC is to direct inject atomized water in the air stream and 
>use 
>the stock IC. I have been working on some energy projects with 
>emerging 
>technologies and evaporative cooling has worked very well for the HVAC 
>
>applications, both pre-cooling of make-up air, as well as indirect 
>cooling 
>of return or outside air.
>
>For really humid areas, you may not be able to add much moisture 
>unless the 
>intake air temp was much higher than ambient (as temp goes up, air 
>holds 
>more water before saturation, resulting in room for additional 
>evaporation 
>and thus heat of vaporization gains).  For real tech-heads, there are 
>
>plenty of temperature, humidity, and flow sensors to address water 
>injection in combustion air streams (one refinery project with direct 
>water 
>injection is slated to save on the order of several million kWh - 
>roughly 
>+25% on high T days - just due to cooler combustion inlet air).
>
>Anyway, with really tight quarters of the Type 44 cars, indirect 
>cooling of 
>the IC for those really hot times could be just what you are looking 
>for. 
> Give it a thought...
>
>-Randy
>'90 200Q in cool coastal climate
>
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