New Electronic Intercooler...

[TSi999]

Have any of you ever heard of this before??

check this out, if its for real it sounds awesome for those hot GA summer days..

Electric Intercooler

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no affiliation I just want to know if any of you have heard of this, and your opinions on it..

thanx

 

[purplehazetsi]

seems cool, i wouldnt buy it till someone else has. And i wonder if that would mean you don't need to put it in the front on the car? That would make the car a real "Sleeper".

Haze

 

[Enigma_Man]

That Electronic intercooler uses "Peltier Junctions" You may have heard of them in use for cooling computer CPUs.

They are _terribly_ inefficient. I calculated once how much energy you would need to power a peltier junction that was as good as a stock side-mount intercooler. It was 500 Kilowatts which is about 40,000 amps of current.

How that particular intercooler works is by cooling down itself (in the add, it mentions that you only run air through it when you need a cool blast of air that lasts 30 seconds or so). And then you divert hot air through it when you need it, until the thing heat-soaks again, and then you need to re-chill it. That would facilitate using reasonable sized peltier junctions that our alternators/batteries could drive.

IMO this is a better idea than something like an electric supercharger (which don't work, there isn't enough power to compress air), but I highly doubt it would be able to stay cool for 30 seconds. I'd venture to guess on a 14 second full throttle run, it'd be fully heat-soaked by the end of it. You'd also need to somehow plumb two intake paths, one which goes through this thing, and another that doesn't, and have some sort of valve to switch between them.

If it cost less than $100, I'd even be willing to give it a whirl, and report my results, but no way is it worth more than that.

So, CONCLUSION: Too expensive, possibly worthwhile, but not as good as the add makes it out to be.

-Jesse, Electrical Engineer

 

[TSi999]

great reply thanks I appreciate the insight. for $899 for the intercooler itself (it doesnt mention any piping) I cant see passing up on a good large sidemount/waterspray or front mount setup.


nice that there are some knowledgeable, friendly and mature people here....

 

[Enigma_Man]

Well thanks for the thanks!

This thing did give me an idea though:

I had planned on getting an air/water IC when I get to doing the intake stuff on my car. Rather than rigging up two intake paths, like this thing would require, I could have a small secondary water reservoir, and cool it down with Peltiers constantly. When I go to WOT, I could switch to the cool water, and flush that through the IC for a cooling burst.

This would give the same effect as those IC sprayer thingies, but it'd be indefinitely replenishable (You wouldn't need to refill on CO2, or N2O or water or alcohol, whatever they use to spray into the IC). Because it's all a closed circuit. It would be like having a reservoir full of ice available at all times for a short while.

Hmmm... that actually sounds like it might be a worthwhile idea, the more I think about it.

I will do some more research, and see how feasable this is.

-Jesse

 

[RuBiCaNT5X]

Peltier setups also generate alot of heat. The cold side's opposite is incredibly hot!! So as cool as it would make your IC, the hotter the engine bay is going to be...

 

[Enigma_Man]

The engine bay with a glowing red-hot manifold isn't going to be 1 degree hotter with a small peltier junction even running full bore The largest peltier junction you can find is about ~100 watts. If I remember correctly, the stock SMIC pumps out about 20,000 watts when it's fully heated. The peltier doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

And who said It's going to be put in the Engine bay? The water reservoir goes in the back of the car.

-Jesse