legacycentral bbs

Hi,
have you read the last "tech article" from Autospeed.com about the fusion intercooling ?

http://autospeed.com/cms/A_1815/article.html

That concept is pretty damn clever. In big, this concept only works on a car wich air-temp at the output of the turbo, when no boost, is bellow 50degres. Also this is only applicable on a daily driver car, wich boost spikes are relatively shorts.

In big, here's how it goes : If you take some frozen water (aka ice ) and melt it, the ice will slowly turn into water, and the water-ice mixture will never exceed 0°c until all the ice is melted. Then, take that ice, and put it into an intercooler. The temp of the intercooler will never exceed 0°c util the ice as melted. That ice intercooler is pretty nice for drag-racers, but the big disadventage is that melted water don't change back into ice after the race... hehe

Replace Ice by a product that has a melting point of 50°c and put it into an intercooler (a water/air intercooler for example). This IC would then have a cooling "plateau" at around 50°c until all that magic product has melted (wich may take a few minutes). So if you put it in a normal turbo car (a legacy ?!), when you cruise on highway, off-boost, your air temp is bellow 50°c, no problem. You step on the gaz, Boost rise as do the temp of the air, runs through the intercooler where the melting process begins, it's temp. rizes at max 50°c during the melting process. Then you release gaz, you come back off-boost, temps goes back under 50°c, and the product changes back to solid, ready for another boost peak.

By using this product, you avoid that your intercooler temp rises along with the air that goes through it, heating the air after some time.

The magic product we are talking about is simply "paraphin wax" ... ! wich has a melting point of 52°c



What do you think of that ? . I think our legacy's turbo air is above 50 when off-bost.

I like it, sort of an "Anti Heat Capacitor" for your intake.

A plain old air to water setup has a similar storage design, what can we find that will freeze at 50 degrees?

don't advertise you're going to make their article public. they'll pull your membership.

Don't think this will work all that well in real life. You will have temperature gradients and all the "wax" won't heat up at the same time. Spots closest to the heat will jump up in temp and melt and heat up, and whilst that may be burning up (not taking away heat) you still have some solid stuff a little bit away. There is a reason they use water because of the way it circulates and transfers heat... blah blah blah. I think the problem with this idea is the difference between convection and conduction or yeah, I'm done, it's late.

I can't read the article but do they have a spot on the heat transfer capabilities of the paraffin? I would think that would be an issue. Plus the lack of circulation.

Gentlemen,

This will not work. Let me give you a clue "Heat Transfer". The mystery solvent would have to be just that, a solvent. Something that would hold on to the heat and take the heat away with it. Then replacing itself with a fresh supply to be heated up again.

Mike

I agree with the concerns about hot spots and about the poor heat conductivity of paraffin wax. I'll add another concern -- if it gets hot enough, paraffin is inflammable. I don't know quite how hot it has to be, but turbo outlet temperatures can get high.

Also, ideally you'd want your intercooler to be capable of cooling to near ambient temperatures. Many intercoolers can do better than 50 degrees.

A substance that boiled around these temperatures rather than melting could be more useful, since you can pump it around as a liquid. Moving it would keep temperatures uniform and improve heat transfer.

Hum... Crazy thought... What about using water but in a partial vacuum? Decreasing pressure would allow it to boil at a lower temperature. And it transfers heat well. And it's been a long time since I've gotten any to burn. Hmm.

2 words - liquid nitrogen

I dunno, I think a standard intercooler done well is all you need.

I was riding with my friend in his VW Jetta TDI one day last winter and I hooked my laptop up to his OBD-II port and watched the numbers... Even at full boost (1 bar) intake temperatures were only a couple degrees above ambient. Of course, that was on a diesel engine that has no throttle, and the ambient temperature was around 3 degrees Celsius, but still... I've been meaning to do that test again now that the weather's warm to compare.