Aircon Intercooler

[surfant]

Hello motorheads,

I have an Idea, but it keeps getting shot down as a bad idea-

Why not use the aircon to cool the air in the intercooler making it smaller and more efficient.

Can anyone see any flaws?

Computers used to use just ally heatsinks to cool the CPU, now they have refrigerant cooled systems...

I see this as the next step, yet everyone at the TSS facebook site keep attacking the idea as ludicrous and have even banned me for my ideas, saying they are childish and not what "Real" motorsport people talk about !

Am i the mad one here?

Any thoughts.

Regards

Ant

[acetip]

Hi Ant and welcome to the club.

Would any gain in cooling the intercooler be lost by driving the aircon.

plus the weight of the aircon equpment has to be considered.

[PaulinhoT]

Interesting idea, welcome in Ant

[Ant Kenworthy]

Thanks for your replies and warm welcome,

The same could have been seid about a supercharger in the early days or even turbo, that the energy used to power the pulley on a supercharger or the exhaust to push the turbine would be used up, but I think with the right streamlining of the system it could be made very efficient,

If you were to put the turbo on a longer shaft to help insulate in the Exhaust side with the cold air side this would drastically reduce the heat, esp if the shaft were ceramic and so an insulator, also maybe having a fluid jacket encasing the turbo on the exhaust end would also reduce temperatures- and we all know hot gases move towards the cold. so would help with gas flow too.

Ive seen charge cooled devices which use antifreeze and dry ice to cool them, but this needs refilling very quickly so a pit stop is required.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Esp from turbo builders and designers.

Regards Ant

[Jamesbelfast]

Increasing the cooling area of the inetrcooler or increasing the air-flow across it may be just as efficient.

You may have to back to basics and consider the efficency of a heat-exhange engine to calculate any benefits though.

Calculate the extra energy needed to run the air con system - then calculate the gains from the cooler intake of air which increases the oxygen content which then needs to be matched by comparable fuel to ensure an efficent combustion cycle.

[jirehn]

Well this is a great idea, But one thing comes in my mind, the aircon is very heavy.

[Toxygene]

When adding a supercharger, there is power that is lost from the crank but the amount of power made from using the supercharger is exponentially larger than the amount lost.

When using a turbocharger, you aren't even using any power that the engine can make use of so there is very little if any measureable parasitic loss to using a turbocharger and the amount of power gained is just as huge and in some cases more than what can be made by using the supercharger.

Using the A/C to cool the intake charge air in any manner is not a good use of the energy being expended. If you were to measure the amount of power made while employing such a system and compare it to the amount of power lost while the system was in use, you would find that you lost more power than you made.

That is why your idea keeps getting shot down. It takes more energy out of the engine than it could ever hope to gain back by cooling the air.

Mod edit - Political content removed