air / water intercooler heat exchanger options

[480sx]

There isn't really any reason a Liquid to Air intercooler can't be used effectively on the street.

Quite aware of this. However, the reality of AWIC's is that once a system is set up correctly for daily driven situations, where reliability is a MUST, its simply another system that can fail. There is all KINDS of cool things you can do with intercooling in general, but for the most part they arnt practical on the street. Especially when a FMIC works great, its like, why over complicate something, what are you really gaining?

In fact, street use should be one of the lower stress applications for ANY intercooler application as people will tend to spend much less time under boost than one might at a race track.

Well, thats not entirely true. Street use can consist of things such as road trips, long trips up the highway, ect. I dont EVER feel the need to have to baby my car. I want to be able to beat the ish out of it all day long if i chose. So, i guess your thinking of street driving in the sense of your typical driver where as i am not such a driver. I doubt im alone in this..

Where as a car at a track gets the ever loving crap beaten out of it for a few min, then usually has time to rest, recoup, refill, and rip up some more rubber later. If it breaks? Hey, we got a trailer and come-along, whos feeling spunky lmao.

Even drag races can tend to have a negligible effect on a liquid to air IC depending on how much water is in the system. Water has a high specific heat and makes for a great heat exchange medium. With enough water in the system, the relatively short duration of a drag race could rely on the heat sink properties of mass much like large air-to-air intercoolers already to. Only, in the case of liquid to air, there will likely be greater heat sink capacity due to the amount of water in such a system.

Now, i have no first hand information or experience on this so excuse me because this could be construed as talking out of my a**. A real drag setup has the absolute minimum capacity reservoir it needs to keep the temperatures stable for one run.

In addition discharge temps from a turbo nearing the edges of their efficiency windows, which every real drag car will do, creates discharge temperatures in the neighborhood of 150C. When put against say... 2C water, that water absorbs a LOT of heat really damned fast.

The thickness of the condensor is only one dimension that needs to be considered. Many condensors are as large as the radiators for the vehicle they are mounted on.

Many maybe, but not most. They are usually similarly sized as far as the.. rectangle however.

And if we were to compare it to a thicker exchanger of the same volume, the thinner exchanger with a larger frontal area would be more efficient at exchanging heat as much more of the exchange surface will be exposed to ambient temperatures. Thicker cores see exchanges with higher temperature air as the air moves through the core making it less effective.

Thats why we have fans on coolant radiators, and thin condensers placed up in front of the path of air.

The ambient exchanger needs to be able to handle that flow rate (I believe condensor lines tend to be narrower than typical liquid to air water lines).

That is true, but i just didnt really even want to get into it because idk.. i cant see the need for a 'radiator' of this nature at all on a drag AWIC setup. To each their own.

In the end, the ability of such a system will depend on the individual components used rather than what its intent was for.

Well, you dont build something without specific intent, so ignoring your intent makes no sense.

But the statement you made is fine.. Just spurred that thought.
Modified by 480sx at 3:45 PM 8/17/2009

[WDRacing]

I think you're talking about an AWIC kit that only utilizes a reservoir of some sort.

All the kits I have ever seen though use a Heat Exchanger in the front of the car with an electric fan to pull heat off the water.

Um...without a resovoir this idea is awful. Almost all the AWICs I've seen have used the heat exchanger / resovoir / pump / cooler. I'd never run a AWIC without having a resovoir. I'm not even sure you CAN run it without.

WD

[C-Kwik]

Quite aware of this. However, the reality of AWIC's is that once a system is set up correctly for daily driven situations, where reliability is a MUST, its simply another system that can fail. There is all KINDS of cool things you can do with intercooling in general, but for the most part they arnt practical on the street. Especially when a FMIC works great, its like, why over complicate something, what are you really gaining?

Not arguing against that. I prefer Air-to-air myself, but from a standpoint of being able to handle heat exchange, liquid-to-air IC's are not unsuitable for the street. Which is pretty much what you stated:

For a daily driven car, after about eh.. 20-30 min you might as well have no intercooler at all. You could keep a massive tank of ice water in the trunk and maybe get a couple hours or maybe even a half day of easy driving out of it before you have to... change a massive tank of water in your trunk

Well, thats not entirely true. Street use can consist of things such as road trips, long trips up the highway, ect. I dont EVER feel the need to have to baby my car. I want to be able to beat the ish out of it all day long if i chose. So, i guess your thinking of street driving in the sense of your typical driver where as i am not such a driver. I doubt im alone in this..

Uhh? Even with long trips, how long do you actually plan on accelerating for? Unless you are hitting top speed (drag limited) and maintaining it, you're not going to see enough sustained boost to tax a reasonably sized intercooler system. Frankly, even air-to-air intercoolers might see heatsoak in such a case. outside of that, imagine how fast you'll be going if you accelerated for 15 seconds straight in a turbo 240. Unless you are planning to be scraped off the road, I doubt you'll be taxing any intercooler system on the street more than on any road course. once you stop accelerating (boosting), intake temperature going into the heat exchanger drops instantly allowing the IC to cool down. And actually once the temperature of the air in the intake drops below the temperature of thewater, the air in the intake actually carries heat away as well.

Where as a car at a track gets the ever loving crap beaten out of it for a few min, then usually has time to rest, recoup, refill, and rip up some more rubber later. If it breaks? Hey, we got a trailer and come-along, whos feeling spunky lmao.

A car on a race track sees this over and over with no breaks. Boost, brakes, turn, boost brakes, turn, boost brakes turn. The recovery time is severely reduced. Typically on the street, you see boost, cruise, brake, stop. Boost, cruise, brake, stop. Heck, you may not even see any boost. And if you aren't boosting, you aren't adding any heat.

Now, i have no first hand information or experience on this so excuse me because this could be construed as talking out of my a**. A real drag setup has the absolute minimum capacity reservoir it needs to keep the temperatures stable for one run.

In theory, that is all you need for a purpose built drag car. Unless, the car is going to be doing back to back runs.

In addition discharge temps from a turbo nearing the edges of their efficiency windows, which every real drag car will do, creates discharge temperatures in the neighborhood of 150C. When put against say... 2C water, that water absorbs a LOT of heat really damned fast.

Look up specific heat. A gram of 150C air will not make a gram of 2C water even get to midpoint between the two. The specific heat of water is nearly 4 times that of atmospheric air. The water temperature will be quite a bit lower.

Many maybe, but not most. They are usually similarly sized as far as the.. rectangle however.

Of all the cars I've owned and worked on, the only ones that were significantly smaller were in Hondas. Every other car had condensors that were just about as large as the radiators. But the point here was that there is still plenty of surface area even in a thin condensor.

Thats why we have fans on coolant radiators, and thin condensers placed up in front of the path of air.

We have fans to help draw enough air through a radiator/condensor when the vehicle speeds are too low to push enough air through. Once up to speed (I noticed at about 25 mph on a car I owned where the fan lost power in traffic), the airflow is sufficient without the fan.

That is true, but i just didnt really even want to get into it because idk.. i cant see the need for a 'radiator' of this nature at all on a drag AWIC setup. To each their own.

Bear in mind, I'm not a big fan of Liquid-to-air IC's. But if I had an application where the logistics made it the better choice, I would do it. Such situations would likely be rear mounted engines with limited airflow and where air-to-air intercoolers and their plumbing would be impossible to put in front of the radiator. Air-to-air ICs pretty much are located in one place as one large unit (with some twinturbo cars running 2 separate units). Liquid-to-air can utlize all kinds of combinations of radiator sizes in any place that it can fit and be plumbed to.

Well, you dont build something without specific intent, so ignoring your intent makes no sense.

The intent portion was referring to the fact that he is looking to adapt a condensor to handle the radiator duties of a liquid-to-air intercooling where the intent of the part was originally to handle radiating duties for an air conditioner. Sorry if that wasn't clear. But ultimately, if the capacity to flow enough coolant and exchange enough heat is there, then there is no reason it wouldn't work.

Um...without a resovoir this idea is awful. Almost all the AWICs I've seen have used the heat exchanger / resovoir / pump / cooler. I'd never run a AWIC without having a resovoir. I'm not even sure you CAN run it without.

WD

At the very least, he would need a reservior for overflow. Perhaps built much like a coolant system where it will bleed off excess coolant as the heated water expands and draws it back in as it cools. Another option would be to run a fully closed system where the reservior was part of the pressurized system. Bleeding pressure to account for expansion would occur at the reservior cap and would only bleed or return air to the reservior. My Titan's cooling system is built this way. I've also seen it on a Saturn. The nice part about such a set up is if you are constantly pumping water through the reservior, it will include the water in the reservior as part of the heat sink. Where as a remote reservior that is outside the pressurized portion would merely stand idle and be dead weight. And yes, I would pressurize such a system like a coolant system. It would increase the boiling point of the water and help prevent air bubbles from forming if the system were to ever get too hot.

[480sx]

Im tierd and im getting ready to crash but, i just wanted to say before i did.. My cars will see DD and track time so, i just build a car to be reliable, long lasting and fast as balls. Thats all that really concerns me when it comes to my own projects. Idk, im into the DIY super car kinda thing heh.

Cant wait to drop my PCV system on you guys..

[Ruff Ryder 6]

just to add my $.02 i run a heat exchanger from a Mustang Cobra on mine, and yes i run AWIC and yes my piping is short. No i don't have a monstrous tank, it holds 5 gallons and sits behind the passenger seat. the thing with AWIC on the street is with the water's specific heat being higher, you use it as a heatsink. It takes a good bit of time when cruising not on boost for the water to heat up and that is when i turn the pump on, only enough to put fresh water in and then i shut it off again, the water that was hot is now in the exchanger before it goes back to the reservoir.

[WDRacing]

Cant wait to drop my PCV system on you guys..

Bet mine is better

[WDRacing]

No i don't have a monstrous tank, it holds 5 gallons and sits behind the passenger seat.

I consider 5 gallons allot. The tank itself will weigh in at 42.5 lbs in water weight alone, then add another 4 lbs for the water in the exchanger and lines and your over 46lbs just in water weight. So you're running close to 55lbs in charge air cooling. Which isn't bad if located in the right spot.

I'd rig my own reservoir out of PVC or a round / flat type tank that could sit in the spare tire well. Any weight added over the rear wheels is always better then the other options IMO. Maybe then I'd run 2 or 3 smaller frame mounted heat exchangers. Lots of options under the car

The key to anything I did would be KISS, keep it simple stupid. A shurflo flow RV water pump is 27 bucks, water lines are stupid cheap, the cooler itself can be bought for $150 or made for about $35 not including labor since I'd weld it up myself. Some alum j-bends, a few couplers and a sensor or two for monitoring and I'd be good to go.

It takes a good bit of time when cruising not on boost for the water to heat up and that is when i turn the pump on, only enough to put fresh water in and then i shut it off again, the water that was hot is now in the exchanger before it goes back to the reservoir.

I'd try a thermostat regulated relay of some type in your case. I'm a big fan of automatic. I'd hate to have to remember to turn the pump on.

WD

[480sx]

Bet mine is better

They are probably similar in concept.. We know whats up lol. However, mine is going to be sick.

[WDRacing]

Mine will be sickER...

[480sx]

You cant mess with EST, you dont want to take this up to the next suffix.

[WDRacing]

Well played sir...

[GODCHSR]

Um...without a resovoir this idea is awful. Almost all the AWICs I've seen have used the heat exchanger / resovoir / pump / cooler. I'd never run a AWIC without having a resovoir. I'm not even sure you CAN run it without.

WD

I am planning on using a reservoir.

I was pointing out that it SEEMED like 480sx was not aware that a heat exchanger was a pretty standard concept on the AWIC systems. I won't be using 5 gallons like other guy listed... for me it will be smaller.

[480sx]

I wasnt aware of that really, lol.

[GODCHSR]

http://www.frozenboost.com/ind...50bd0All but one of their kits has an exchanger in it... makes it much more driveable.

Plus for the strip car, in between passes you just switch the pump and fan on and it cools down all the water before the next pass.

[WDRacing]

Between passes you should drain the water and refill it with ice water. We're talking 75-100 degree's in IATs.

[480sx]

^^ Exactly. You dont need any radiator to cool the water to ambient temps. Your talking ICE water here dude, 1/4th or an eif at a time. ~4C water. Why would you ever want to exchange that much stored energy(think thermal) with ambient air temps of usually at least 24C, but most strip days are spent in the summer heat, on the blazing hot strip.
Modified by 480sx at 11:19 AM 8/18/2009

[sorrowfulkiller]

I'm planning on using a frozenboost system for a 240 when I get outta basic and tech. Reasoning for this is because as its been said before, water pulls heat away from things faster than air. Water take a large amounts of heat to actually heat up to the temperature of what is heating it.

Think about it this way, an engine normally has a thermostat for 180-195 degrees Fahrenheit, you put a lower degree thermostat to keep it cooler. Your engine puts out immense amount of energy, for instance cylinder temps can be in the thousands.... and 180 degree water keeps the engine cool enough so nothing melts.

No I don't know about you guys but I would say that if a radiator/water cooling system can cool an engine just fine... it should be able to cool intake temps just fine as long as it has constant flow.

[C-Kwik]

I'm planning on using a frozenboost system for a 240 when I get outta basic and tech. Reasoning for this is because as its been said before, water pulls heat away from things faster than air. Water take a large amounts of heat to actually heat up to the temperature of what is heating it.

While it pulls it away faster than air, keep in mind that the charge air core is generally much smaller than a typical air-to-air core. So there can't be a direct comparison as you have to account for the dwell time of the medium and charge air within the core as well as the surface area of the parts of the core that transfer heat. Materials can come into play as well, but most are made of aluminum so we'll not get into it.

Think about it this way, an engine normally has a thermostat for 180-195 degrees Fahrenheit, you put a lower degree thermostat to keep it cooler. Your engine puts out immense amount of energy, for instance cylinder temps can be in the thousands.... and 180 degree water keeps the engine cool enough so nothing melts.

Lower thermostats simply cycle water at lower temps. And while cylinders can see some high temps, only a portion of it makes its way into the cooling system. During the expansion stroke, the process of expansion actually converts heat energy into mechanical energy. Even then, temperature in that of itself is not terribly important. When you consider that the high temperature starts in air, and that air's specific heat is quite low, any heat that is transferred isn't going to cause an equal rise in temperature to the water. The key here is that minimally, the amount of heat carried away by the water is equal to the amount of heat energy absorbed by the water from the combustion chambers.

No I don't know about you guys but I would say that if a radiator/water cooling system can cool an engine just fine... it should be able to cool intake temps just fine as long as it has constant flow.

Liquid to air coolers certainly work just fine. The key is to properly design a system to sustain an acceptably low temperature of water to the core. A poorly designed system can be as effective as an air-to-air intercooler that is too small for its application. I/C manufacturers should have all the data you need to make sure this isn't a problem though. But in the case of the O/P, since he is using a radiator unit that wasn't intended for this application, who knows if it will be sufficient...

[kinder]

Just curious how this project is going. I am looking at doing a AWIC system myself. What pump are you using? Which cooler core did you decide on? Are you running the water inline or reversed? Are you running straight water or a mix of water/ Water Wetter or coolant mix? What hp is your car running and how fast are you circulating the water?

Thx

[WDRacing]

Welcome to NICO

You can use any decent shurflo water pump, they can be had for about $24 at any RV parts store. The only ways to control flow is to either add or subtract restriction in the system or control the voltage going to the pump itself. I don't think you need to worry about flow to much though, just so long as the water pump is designed for something like an RV.

WD

[drb930]

Subscribed!