Higher efficiency intercoolers?

[Howard]

Would it not be possible to bubble the pressurized intake charge through a closed loop of water (in other words, a normal intercooler except for contact between the two media)? I can see that if the air flew through the water in one unseparated stream the cooling efficiency would not increase by much, but if there were an aerator prior to the water...

I don't see hydrolock being a problem.

 

[Howard]

Heh, after reading this over I just thought of a way to attain variable compression ratio. w00t!

 

[mAdD INDIAN]

Originally posted by: Howard
Would it not be possible to bubble the pressurized intake charge through a closed loop of water (in other words, a normal intercooler except for contact between the two media)? I can see that if the air flew through the water in one unseparated stream the cooling efficiency would not increase by much, but if there were an aerator prior to the water...

I don't see hydrolock being a problem.

you mean an air to water to air intercooler? They do that already.

 

[blahblah99]

That, and they have water-sprayed intercoolers, and NOS cooled intercoolers.

 

[Howard]

I thought that liquid-air intercoolers route the air through a bunch of channels encased in a coolant... No?

 

[Bignate603]

so you mean literally have it bubble up through the liquid? That wouldn't be a closed loop of water anymore... You're having hot air straight from a turbo feed through the water, which will cause it to boil/evaporate off in nothing flat. If you can get around the design problems of the water sloshing up into or getting sucked up into the engine it may eliminate the needs for water injection in high compression engines to prevent knocking, but i think that it's so hard to work the current systems would work better.

 

[Howard]

Then again, we could put the water under pressure like engine coolant, but that seems harder to implement.