alright its 2am, and i just came up with this idea lying on the bed and now i can't sleep thinking about it so im gonna just put it down while its fresh in my mind

we all know how a refrigerator works right? compressing air, cooling the hot compressed air, then expanding it to decrease the temperatures.. simple enough

so what if, instead of running a straight 12psi boost, you ran something insane - say 60 psi. the charge air immediately after the boost would be HOT.. something like 500 degrees F (havn't bothered to do any calculations so whatever)... and then run that through the intercooler to drop it to say 200 degrees F

then flow that air into a huge expansion chamber, lowering the pressure to say 20psi. the air would be then colder than atmospheric and still be under high pressure

am i missing something here??? this seems too good to be true...

i guess condensation would be a problem, but just have the expansion chamber designed so temps drop to atmospheric instead of less than atmospheric...

maybe its just too late and i need some sleep

 

You're simplifying the whole system too much...

You're not taking into account of CFM or velocity.&nbsp A big turbo is going to fill up whatever expansion chamber you got - all you did was add a little lag into the system.

Keep in mind, the restriction in the entire system is the TURBO, NOT the engine or the intercooler.



-Ted

 

thought about it a little more... it would be damn hard to build the piping for such a thing and still flow well.. and you'd need one helluva turbo, not to mention most turbo's arent exactly optimized to push 60psi boost.. this would probably be beyond the surge limit of most turbos... but is it impossible?

maybe even some sort of variable geometry throat between the high pressure and low pressure zones to prevent over-expansion and condensation at low boost.. i dunno.. i really need to sleep, got autox tomorrow morning

damn im hungry too

and homework

argh, high school sucks

 

yeah the more i think about it... the more i realize the expansion chamber would have to be HUGE

oh well at least i can sleep now

 

The system has been done before. It uses a second turbo. The normal turbo's compressor's output goes into a second turbo where it is compressed even more. Then the air goes to an intercooler. The air coming out of the intercooler goes to the TURBINE side of the second turbo, and drives it. It loses pressure and heat in driving the second turbo.

You can end up with manifold temps well below ambient. The problem is, where are you going to put all the ducting? And you not only have turbo lag to worry about, you have cooling-turbo lag to worry about!

 

Vortex tube refrigeration...You need velocities well beyond what you could get out of the turbo system..Max