Black intercoolers
Discussion
Max_Torque said:
Technnically speaking, charge coolers (air->water->air) are actually LESS effective than intercoolers air->air. However, they may be more efficient on a typical road driving cycle (lots of short boost events, and plenty of time for the water to be cooled down again)
I was wrestling with this for a while for my car (Ultima) but in reality there are two heating /cooling cycles for a charge cooler, one for the radiator and one for the cooler, as above if you are "on it" for a significant period of time the inevitable will be heat soak, regardless of how large the reservoir is etc.If you are pootling around and doing the occasional blast this will be the win over an intercooler
F.C. said:
chuntington101 said:
That's very interesting. Wonder why OEMs don't do it...
Just a stab in the dark but there are probably other surrounding hot bodies that will radiate significant heat to the intercooler.obviously this is not an issue on a Noble.
F.C. said:
Max_Torque said:
Technnically speaking, charge coolers (air->water->air) are actually LESS effective than intercoolers air->air. However, they may be more efficient on a typical road driving cycle (lots of short boost events, and plenty of time for the water to be cooled down again)
I was wrestling with this for a while for my car (Ultima) but in reality there are two heating /cooling cycles for a charge cooler, one for the radiator and one for the cooler, as above if you are "on it" for a significant period of time the inevitable will be heat soak, regardless of how large the reservoir is etc.If you are pootling around and doing the occasional blast this will be the win over an intercooler
F.C. said:
I was wrestling with this for a while for my car (Ultima) but in reality there are two heating /cooling cycles for a charge cooler, one for the radiator and one for the cooler, as above if you are "on it" for a significant period of time the inevitable will be heat soak, regardless of how large the reservoir is etc.
If you are pootling around and doing the occasional blast this will be the win over an intercooler
Is that really true, if the set up is correct. I.e large enough rad and rad in good air flow then Why would it be any different to your std cooling system. If u are on it all the time then a car would overheat based on this theory but the rad keeps it from doing this?If you are pootling around and doing the occasional blast this will be the win over an intercooler
mgbond said:
F.C. said:
I was wrestling with this for a while for my car (Ultima) but in reality there are two heating /cooling cycles for a charge cooler, one for the radiator and one for the cooler, as above if you are "on it" for a significant period of time the inevitable will be heat soak, regardless of how large the reservoir is etc.
If you are pootling around and doing the occasional blast this will be the win over an intercooler
Is that really true, if the set up is correct. I.e large enough rad and rad in good air flow then Why would it be any different to your std cooling system. If u are on it all the time then a car would overheat based on this theory but the rad keeps it from doing this?If you are pootling around and doing the occasional blast this will be the win over an intercooler
Obviously if packaging is a nightmare, and you have no way of getting air flow to / from the intercooler (i once saw a Japanese MRS Turbo with a front mounted intercooler! lol) then air to water becomes the better solution.
chuntington101 said:
Where do you put a large enough rad to maintain constant water and (after the chargecooler) air temps? I bet radiator is going to be about the same size as an intercooler.
If you want the same continuous heat rejection as with an intercooler, the LTR of a chargecooler system needs to be BIGGER than the intercooler (because the Thermal gradient (deltaT) is LOWER!!)Of course, what most people don't realise is that the vast majority of the heat in a chargecooling system used transiently (ie quick spurts of boost, followed by coasting, like in most road driving etc) is actually removed from the system by the ENGINE CHARGE AIR and not from the LTR!!
Going back to the originally posted video, the telling point that is completely missed (maybe deliberately) is just how far they needed to put the fan away from the rad to ensure that they could measure a difference between the black and unpainted intercoolers!!
This is because of the fact the average temperature of the radiating body (the intercooler external surfaces) is very low in this case (lets say around 100degC) so the maximum radiating energy is extremely low. With NO forced convection (no fan), improving the radiation losses reduced air exit temps significantly, even though the total extra heat energy lost was tiny, but adding the slightest amount of forced convection (fan was placed on the other end of the table about 1.5m away!!) immediately completely negated ALL of the radiative heat loss!
For example, for a typical intercooler at say 100 deg, radiation losses will be in the order of 10s of watts, and yet forced convective heat loss will be measured in kW!!!
So, yes, you can paint your IC black and get say 10 extra watts of cooling when stationary (assuming that there are no hotter "bodies" in the local area of course) but so what? Those 10 extra watts are pointless, and because you are putting another thermal barrier between in the heat path, you are actually degrading the (much much more dominant) convective path (hence, with the fan, even at the very low airflow velocity they tested at, with the fan a large distance from the rad, they got less heat transfer...........
chuntington101 said:
F.C. said:
Max_Torque said:
Technnically speaking, charge coolers (air->water->air) are actually LESS effective than intercoolers air->air. However, they may be more efficient on a typical road driving cycle (lots of short boost events, and plenty of time for the water to be cooled down again)
I was wrestling with this for a while for my car (Ultima) but in reality there are two heating /cooling cycles for a charge cooler, one for the radiator and one for the cooler, as above if you are "on it" for a significant period of time the inevitable will be heat soak, regardless of how large the reservoir is etc.If you are pootling around and doing the occasional blast this will be the win over an intercooler
Which is why I was considering charge-cooling however the intake temps on a s/charged car should be lower anyway due to lack of heat transfer from the exhaust turbine section of a turbo set up.
Still looking at a front roof mounted duct solution to improve things.
Above the engine isn't that bad as long as you can ensure sufficient cold airflow. Porsche and Subaru have used top mounted coolers for years!
One option might be to fit a larger intercooler? maybe something like a Garrett 12" x 24" x 4" should work well if you can ensure nice cold air from the top of the clip.
One option might be to fit a larger intercooler? maybe something like a Garrett 12" x 24" x 4" should work well if you can ensure nice cold air from the top of the clip.
F.C. said:
however the intake temps on a s/charged car should be lower anyway due to lack of heat transfer from the exhaust turbine section of a turbo set up.
er, sorry, but not really no. Practically no heat is transferred from the CHRA to the compressor housing when under boost, because the conduction path is long and tortuous and the deltaT tiny. If you have a centrifugal supercharger (rotrex etc) then you have similar compressor efficiency (and hence upheat) to a turbocharger, but if you have an old style mechanical (rootes/sprintex type etc) you have significantly more heating for any given pressure ratio because the efficiency is much much lowerchuntington101 said:
Where do you put a large enough rad to maintain constant water and (after the chargecooler) air temps? I bet radiator is going to be about the same size as an intercooler. So in most cases you may as well fit the more efficient air to air unit and save a load of weight.
Obviously if packaging is a nightmare, and you have no way of getting air flow to / from the intercooler (i once saw a Japanese MRS Turbo with a front mounted intercooler! lol) then air to water becomes the better solution.
I've got a small rad for my CC upfront. When on track I monitored the temps post IC and Post CC. At full chat I was seeing temps drop up to 10 deg difference?Obviously if packaging is a nightmare, and you have no way of getting air flow to / from the intercooler (i once saw a Japanese MRS Turbo with a front mounted intercooler! lol) then air to water becomes the better solution.
A few years ago when I had a GT4, most people would swap out the stock CC which was top mounted and replace it with a standard evo 6 IC in the position that the CC rad was in. Data logging (not by me) showed much lower intake temps across mixed driving. On track the CC was fine for a few laps but if you came in and didn't give it enough time to cool down before going back out the power drop was huge. No such issues with the FMIC.
Ant3R said:
A few years ago when I had a GT4, most people would swap out the stock CC which was top mounted and replace it with a standard evo 6 IC in the position that the CC rad was in. Data logging (not by me) showed much lower intake temps across mixed driving. On track the CC was fine for a few laps but if you came in and didn't give it enough time to cool down before going back out the power drop was huge. No such issues with the FMIC.
And thats one of the difficulties in getting a chargecooler system right, you have two heat transfer point. IE you need to a) make sure your charge cooler is capable of removing enough heat from the compressed air and b) your HE or LTR is large enough to reject that heat. With an intercooler you only have one figure to think about. So if you intake temps are high you simple fit a bigger / better unit in there.
With a chagecooler setup you need to ID if the problem is at the chargecooler side or LTR/HE side. Its normally pretty easy to upgrade the LTR/HE but can be a lot harder to upgrade the chargecooler. Even then once you have upgrade one side of the system that will have an impact on the other. I would love to see the maths that the OEMs use when sizing kit. Max?
chuntington101 said:
And thats one of the difficulties in getting a chargecooler system right, you have two heat transfer point. IE you need to a) make sure your charge cooler is capable of removing enough heat from the compressed air and b) your HE or LTR is large enough to reject that heat.
With an intercooler you only have one figure to think about. So if you intake temps are high you simple fit a bigger / better unit in there.
With a chagecooler setup you need to ID if the problem is at the chargecooler side or LTR/HE side. Its normally pretty easy to upgrade the LTR/HE but can be a lot harder to upgrade the chargecooler. Even then once you have upgrade one side of the system that will have an impact on the other. I would love to see the maths that the OEMs use when sizing kit. Max?
That's why I have Both With an intercooler you only have one figure to think about. So if you intake temps are high you simple fit a bigger / better unit in there.
With a chagecooler setup you need to ID if the problem is at the chargecooler side or LTR/HE side. Its normally pretty easy to upgrade the LTR/HE but can be a lot harder to upgrade the chargecooler. Even then once you have upgrade one side of the system that will have an impact on the other. I would love to see the maths that the OEMs use when sizing kit. Max?
chuntington101 said:
And thats one of the difficulties in getting a chargecooler system right, you have two heat transfer point. IE you need to a) make sure your charge cooler is capable of removing enough heat from the compressed air and b) your HE or LTR is large enough to reject that heat.
With an intercooler you only have one figure to think about. So if you intake temps are high you simple fit a bigger / better unit in there.
With a chagecooler setup you need to ID if the problem is at the chargecooler side or LTR/HE side. Its normally pretty easy to upgrade the LTR/HE but can be a lot harder to upgrade the chargecooler. Even then once you have upgrade one side of the system that will have an impact on the other. I would love to see the maths that the OEMs use when sizing kit. Max?
Indeed, some people did try to upgrade the CC setup with upgraded rads but there was nothing off the shelf which meant the evo 6 ic route was an easy win by comparison.With an intercooler you only have one figure to think about. So if you intake temps are high you simple fit a bigger / better unit in there.
With a chagecooler setup you need to ID if the problem is at the chargecooler side or LTR/HE side. Its normally pretty easy to upgrade the LTR/HE but can be a lot harder to upgrade the chargecooler. Even then once you have upgrade one side of the system that will have an impact on the other. I would love to see the maths that the OEMs use when sizing kit. Max?
Gassing Station | Noble | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff