As other commitments said, you need it to be liquid in the intercooler, a more effective solution could be dry ice and alcohol (isopropyl or something with a nice low freezing temperature) in a cooler (don't seal it shut or it will explode) with a pump to circulate it through the intercooler and back to the cooler. That way your dry ice can take its time to cool down the alcohol and the intercooler core before the run.
Steven W I can see by the co2 bottle being frozen that the phase change is happening inside the bottle. The co2 needs to be compressed and liquid all the way to the intercooler. Once inside the intercooler it can be released and the phase change will happen where actually needed to realize the full benefit of the latent heat of vaporization. The intercooler needs to be supercooled not the bottle.
Air to air intercoolers are built with thin metal in the core to get as much efficiency as possible from using gas (air) as well. Water to air intercoolers are constructed thicker to keep water from getting into the intake plus water cools better than air does. I'd like to see Holdener use something like liquid nitrogen circulating through a water to air intercooler.
The temperature change comes from the phase change. It's working like a vapour compression refrigeration cycle. The temperature of the liquid CO2 is obviously not -120°f. It's the same temperature as ambient, it absorbs heat as it evaporates.
Problem with co2 when coming out of a bottle is that its temp drops so hard you get dry ice flakes . Now the issue becomes sublimation it skips the most effective form of heat transfer which is liquid , so now youre just blowing snow flakes past the core and nothing sticks to make the transfer
Lets get into the details, that's where power is made anyway. The specific heat of Carbon Dioxide/CO2 by mass is .839 The specific heat of Water/H2O by mass is 4.1813 or around 4.2 by volume If you take into consideration that CO2 is drastically lower mas per volume(the intercooler is a set volume) than it is easy to understand the results. Interestingly the specific heat of air at sea level is 1.0035 by mass, which means pumping room air through the intercooler would have been more effective over time. The results you got worked as well as they did because the CO2 evaporating was very cold and cooled off the intercooler(which being made of aluminum has a specific heat of .897 by mass or 2.422 by volume). The summery of all that is that the higher the specific heat, the more energy it takes to heat it up. Because energy moves from high to low (like heat) the water literally sucks the heat out of the air better than the CO2. The best solution is to use the highest specific heat medium by volume (which happens to be water) and make it as cold as possible. The issue is Water freezes at 32F/0C which means you can't use it to get sub zero. A 'possible' solution is to run antifreeze and dry ice. The issue with that is that Ethylene Glycol has a specific heat of 2.42 by mass which is about half of water, but even worse, it's less dense so its only 1/3 the specific heat of water by volume. You can add more water which raises its specific heat but lowers also raises its freezing point. Propylene Glycol has higher specific heat but is higher viscosity so would be harder to pump through the intercooler. I suggest you re-run the test with 50/50 Ethylene Glycol with dry ice and keep adding water/diluting it with water till freezing becomes an issue... buy a lot of dry ice.
This is really good. I like this. I would use methanol as opposed to a glycol antifreeze. It has a freezing point of about -145°f, a specific heat of 2.52 and a density of .79. It is glycol antifreeze on steroids for this application. You don't have to worry about it freezing at all and the viscosity isn't as high as ethylene or propylene glycol. The volume energy density is 48% that of water. It's actually higher than antifreeze solutions. Still what I would do is run two air to water charge coolers. The first one with dyno water. It's really effective and the output temperature is in the 80s as opposed to the 250s as it comes out of the compressor. The second air to water cooler I would circulate methanol that's dry ice cooled. When it hits the second stage if everything is working the liquid will be -109f, the sublimation temperature of dry ice. The issue you have is you need a second charge cooler, a reservoir, pump and connections that can all handle methanol and the reservoir needs to be huge. The enthalpy of sublimation is awesome, 571kj/kg. Ya, it's 1.7x the heat of fusion of water and the density of dry ice is 1.4-1.6. A reservoir with methanol and dry ice would work, why it needs to be huge is because as the dry ice sublimates it does not add to the volume of circulating liquid as ice in a water tank does. The reservoir needs to hold enough liquid to circulate with no dry ice and enough to submerge the dry ice. You could.do it with this one stage but the idea is to super cool the air charge and it's easier to cool an air charge that's already half way from 250f to -110f.
Judging by the Ice Line on the CO2 tank the liquid level was below the valve. Prop up the bottom of the bottle so liquid CO2 is coming out the hose. With liquid CO2 going to the intercooler it will work.
Flip the bottle upside down ( well that's what Scotty cannon says to do) ....you want liquid co2 going in, not just gas passing through , basically dry ice the core ,so a small restrictor on exit
Those little bastard squirrels ate the plastic gas cap on my garden tractor this year. Every year they eat a cap on a lawn mower or some other piece of equipment.
@@fascistpedant758 Same but different , I heard somewhere that alot of wire insulation is derived from a corn based material......no wonder rodents like to chew wires. I do generator service and I'll just say I hate meeces to peeces.
Richard, use a liquid intercooler with a rad to cool the water and spray the rad with the co2. If you set it up with multiple spray jets on the co2 to give good coverage to the rad you will get temps down and power up nicely. Really love your shows, keep up the interesting tech articles! (UK fan)
running an air to air inter-cooler and just spraying the liquid co2 onto it allowing it to frost onto the cooler might work better. Having the C02 running through an air to water intercooler and not having it change state your just dealing with thermal conductivity and the incoming temp of the co2
I agree gas doesn't transfer heat like a liquid. I wonder if he is loosing airflow too through the intercooler due to moisture from the ambient air freezing inside the intercooler.
I would actually do both. Have the air to water with dyno water, it leaves that at 80-82°f as opposed to the 240+F out of the compressor. Put that 80f air charge through a air to air and spray the outside with CO2 or a second air to water with CO2. There is too much heat for the cryogenic gas to absorb. If you take a bunch of heat out first the Carbon Dioxide has a chance.
would it be a bad idea to spray co2 on the outside of a air to water intercololer much like you would do with an air to air intercooler? i would think it would work but my worry would be that while spraying the air to water intercooler the low temps of the co2 could freeze the liquid inside of the air to water intercooler if it doesnt have enough antifreeze in it. but so long as you use antifreeze shouldnt it be safe to spray an air to water intercooler with co2?
@@denniswhite2768 You can only get the water so cold its may be better that under high loads just have a small bottle of Freon or c02 or nitrous spray onto the intercooler to chill the circulating water
It’s like your dealing with refrigeration and it needs a certain sized orifice to get the right drop across the inter cooler core, using liquid up to the orifice and vapor inside the inter cooler but monitoring the exit like a txv
Bear Fulmer I'm with you in that one. He would need some kind of variable txv to deal with the rather large window of temp change through the cooler from the boost curve, as compared to the narrower temp change window a typical refrigeration system would deal with
The fact is, it's colder. But the cold will allow you to put more boost and more timing and than you get more power, power that you couldn't get without cooling.
Right away you are running a gas through a cooler made for a fluid with the density of water. To confirm the problem temperature of the gas going in VS out would need to be recorded. To do it with cold gas you need an Air to air inter cooler that has a manifold feeding and exhausting the gas to ensure it has a chance to remove the required amount of heat. Without going into any math it would need to be VERY large in comparison to a normal unit considering the amount of heat transfer required. To do it properly you need to think of it like a car AC and a TX valve. To draw the maximum amount of heat with the CO2 you want it to transition from a liquid to a gas inside the cooler or just before. However the cooler wouldn't be made for the safe handling of the potential pressure that the CO2 could produce. there are a few ways it could be done but each has it's own inherent problems. CO2 liquid handling is tricky. Firstly you need to have a proper cryogenic bottle that will allow the tapping of liquid CO2 and not just a welding gas bottle. A -8 line with a liquid feed to a primary regulator directly feeding the compensating regulator then into the heat exchanger. The pressure and temp inside the heat exchanger will need to be controlled to keep the transition act continuing to occur without freezing solid with CO2. It could be done but a controller and some complex valves would be required. Really not even slightly practical. The reason why it isn't used as a refrigerant. A proper refrigerant is required to be handled practically so the only decision is what medium to use? Butane boils off at -1c at atmospheric pressure so that's no good it wont get the temp you want. R134a wont get cold enough either but plumbed up using the cooler like the evaporator it would be effective and has proven itself in this app but sadly it wont go below -40c. The external system would need to be huge. Not Practical. You could use SO2 but that is awful stuff to handle and even the tiniest leak has people running. I would suggest methane as the most practical medium through the inter cooler as it transitions at -162c any colder than that and the air will start to fall apart. Of course if you don't like the risk with methane there is always liquid Argon at -182c that will get it frosty. LOL But seriously you just want the coldest you can get it to without it becoming a NASA engineering project. Get some Silicone Heat Transfer Fluid and a mag drive pump, a car radiator a tray that it will fit in and 20 lbs of dry ice. Fill the cooling side of the heat exchanger and plumb to the pump and radiator. submerge the radiator in the same oil and then bury it in dry ice. That will get you -80c liquid into your inter cooler. That should get the charge temp down providing the inter cooler is big enough. I wonder what you did?
@@dazaspc It's effective, but requires high operating pressure and low condenser temperatures. It's often used on ships where the high operating pressures require smaller compressors, saving space, and the cold ocean water can be used to cool the condenser.
Wrong type of intercooler? I wonder if instead of running Co2 through an air to water if it would have better effect to spray Co2 onto an air to air (CRYO2 make kits for that)
The issue with the cryo sprayers is you have to keep refilling it. I'm thinking that he's looking for something you don't have to keep refilling and it's more consistent temperatures vs what intercooler sprayers can offer.
Treat this like an evaporator. Reduce the flow drastically just prior to entering the intercooler. In my mind you don’t even need to run the engine. Restrict flow in and measure the temp of the cooler. Repeat until you create what is desired. Also I’m curious what restricting flow out of the cooler will effect. Also this is hands down the best scientifically based engine channel on RUclips. Awesome info with brutal honesty. Can’t say thank you enough!
100%. Do your research on how an ac system works. FYI there are guys here in Australia using ac gas to air type coolers under twin screw blowers as intercoolers. Using the vehicles factory ac pump.
Refrigeration is more efficient than water to air or air to air but it the 6 degree split across the heat exchange is difficult to control if you are aiming for 0 degree air intake temp
-Possibly the core was icing up? not flowing enough CO2? or even not enough thermal mass especially if it was warming up at the IC discharge pipe. An option from the CPU overclocking community is to use Acetone as the working fluid in the intercooler. Much the same way as water ice except this time you use Dry Ice. Acetone has a melting point of -95°C (-138°F,) which plays really nice with CO2 (dry ice's) sublimation temperature of -78°C. Thus you can't freeze the acetone with dry ice. Also acetone has a boiling point of 50°C so as the fluid heats up during the run you're still not likely to boil it off (a problem with gaseous working mediums; remember that liquids transfer heat way better than gases.) Especially if you've got plenty of excess Dry ice in the cooling chest. Acetone has a specific heat of ~2kJ/(kg K) (about half that of water,) so it will heat up more quickly, but in a short dyno run, that's not really an issue if you have enough in the ice chest with more Dry Ice. I estimte you'd want 20-30L (or quarts / 5-6Gallons? sorry Australian) of acetone with a supply of 30-50kg (100lbs?) of dry ice to cool it down. Though I'd start by leaving the acetone in the freezer over night to get a head start ;) This is a test I'd love to see :D
1 thing that water does have to its advantage is mass and it's inherent ability to transfer heat. The thing that you are fighting is the energy of the co2 is being used up before it can make it out the other side. 1 route to look at may be a twin feed and twin vent. Or alternately you could all science class and open up 1 side of the intercooler weld a box on it and run a dry ice loaded onto it.
How many gallons of water during a run? It's way easier to cool water with ice than come up with pounds of liquid CO2. The latent heat is not terribly different and you can put 20lbs of ice in a tank.
Part of the problem with reaching the potential of this configuration is that the co2 flow and cooling capacity is dropping as the pressure in the tank drops, at the same time, at higher rpm there is increased airflow through the core which would require more refrigerant flow to keep up. More capacity/ larger tank(s) would help. I'd try to control the flow / pressure in the test more tightly. More instrumentation would be helpful... Need to add bottle pressure, IC inlet and outlet temp on both the air and refrigerant side.
Do you know the mass throughput of the CO2, the weight of CO2 per minute. vs the weight of water going through the intercooler. Could be a case of a small mass of very cold CO2 vs a large mass of tepid water, comparatively. Quality vs Quantity perhaps?
Your not addressing air density, only temp. You need a weather station and look at humidity vs temp. When are you going to mist water or meth straight into the turbos?
I don't quite have time to read the other comments right now, but what I think is happening is that you're getting an insulating layer of ice building up on the inside of the cooler from the extremely low temperature of the CO2. This will prevent some of the heat transfer from the air into the intercooler cold side. Just like when playing with a CO2 fire extinguisher, as soon as you release it to low pressure state it phase changes to gas and does the extreme temperature drop - this causes condensation which creates an ice buildup. I'll check the other comments when I have a chance to see what other people are thinking.
Since that is a liquid intercooler, try this: Make an insulated reservoir. Put acetone in it. Put dry ice in the acetone. Wait for bubbling to basically stop. Now pump that chilled acetone through the intercooler.
Is there a turning point where the air charge could be too cold? To the point that the fuel doesn't want to evaporate. Should run an orifice ( like how an AC system works) right in front of the intercooler so it forces a phase shift inside the cooler. Maybe even run an AC system as an intercooler
Always wondered what liquid nitrogen would do poured into water to air cooler with a little breather screwed on after filling? Would love to see some testing
Do you think you would see a change when it is 100F with 80% Humidity? Like in North Carolina. 65F is pretty damn nice temps so you are not going to see much in change. I know from my Butt Dyno when I drive my Cummins Diesel at ~32F it seems makes less power compared at 60F on a cool morning.
You should try hooking up an AC compressor to the engine and running R134 through that intercooler. See if the cooling property can overcome the parasitic loss of the compressor
And try running it through a evaporator core. Liquids and gasses have different properties, gases the atoms are spread out more so the gas will warm up faster due to less mass then water so you might also need to run it through faster. Loved the video man I would really love to see something like this work cuz It could really change the industry
according to thermo dynamics you should be able to use the AC system from the stock engine to cool down the charge air and gain more power than the AC pump consumes , since AC cycles are more than 100% efficient and up to 250% efficient. on paper. would be neat to see the difference on the dyno. dodge obviously has used it lately but what is the dyno difference if you dedicate the entire AC system to only cooling the charge air. and what about on a NA set up as well.
Use two (2) intercoolers 1. The standard air/water cooler you have used on all the other tests. 2. Air/Air spraying liquid CO2, on the outside. This will take out all the humidity (water) in the air. Making the air denser. Also dry air loves liquid droplets of fuel.
Great project! The heat transfer coefficient of the gaseous CO2 is worse than water, and as others pointed out the heat capacity of CO2 is 5x lower than water. Both of those reduce the effectiveness of the intercooler. The result is that you need a bigger cooler, and as your intuition told you, more flow. CO2 will keep dragging the air temp down if it has more tube area to work over, because it’s so much colder than the charge air coming out of the compressor. But unlike the water that stays at almost the same temperature as it goes through the cooler, at the same flow rate, CO2 would heat up about as fast as the air as it passes through the cooler. The heat capacity of air is 1.0[kJ/kgK], similar to the CO2 gas at about 0.75[kJ/kgK]) so it needs more tube area to work over in order to pull the air temp down. Essentially, the intercooler effectiveness is reduced due to the change to CO2 but you gain the potential to cool down to a much lower air temp by changing to a cryogenic cooling medium. PS - I’m still interested in accepting your challenge to tune that carburetor not to go rich with increasing rpm!
Very interesting, you’re a thinker and your material is way ahead of anything I’ve seen.love out of the box thinking and then testing it on the dyno . Trying to watch all your test, enjoyed the one on the LS rocker arms.Glad you used the little B T R torque cam it made good power.
Liquid pulls heat at 14x the rate of gas with aluminum core. So it’s basically functioning like an air to air intercooler with c02 but the core size is much smaller than most air to airs on this size setup. I’ve water would probably work much better, id be interested what would happen if you used ice water in the cooler and used c02 at the turbo inlet to decrease the temp of air starting at the turbo
I set up and built a propane fuelled 20b 3 rotor rotary rx8, i ran my gas lines into the barrel intercooler instead of water, before gas was sent to reducer and heated there to create vapour injection. . What I saw was extremely promising, and I think the difference here is that the more boost and flow, the more heat builds but also the more gas flows. So temps stay constant throughout the range. Your co2 just needs to increase to scale as revs/heat/boost increases. Lpg/propane is extremely misunderstood and misrepresented, mainly due to most gas cars running dual fuel systems. By running Solo gas, the tune can be done optimum to suit the gas. Not to mention the use of correct plugs etc. Dual fuel cars are rubbish. Good vids btw. Super informative 👌
I always love Richard's testing !! Hey Richard can you do a triple intercooler # 1 water to air before the turbo # 2 water to air charge air then #3 run the holley intake with the intercooler and run them all with ice water !! See if you can get the charged air temp to 0 !!!
Gotta flood evaporator, or in this case your intercooler. Your superheating your co2. Its all boiling away withing the first few inches. You may want to try a tank of 134a or simmular low presssure refrigerant and on the exhust side maybe restrict it just slightly maybe to 1/4 so to keep the pressure up and the refriferant a liquid longer. Liquid nitrogen sounds good too. Im not sure of the operating pressures u want with that for 0deg. Have to download a p/t chart. Cant wait to see if u get this going.
you need it to work like a a/c or refrigerator and it could work well, have the hose out of the intercooler much larger than the inlet pipe that way there is a drop of pressure through the intercooler, that will mean that the co2 is absorbing energy to expand which will cool your IAT's and give best possible results. but as others have said the fact that its a gas, it might just not have enough thermal capacity for the cooling?
Turbo John was recently working on this same thing. Perhaps check out his channel. I do remember that his video showed the core freezing on the inlet side then by the time it reached the outlet side it was close to ambient. May have to freeze the entire core before a run?
Couldn't see your whole setup. Did you invert the tank to spray liquid into the intercooler? Laying on its side may work for a limited time, but use a nitrous bottle stand to invert it completely. Do you have a restrictor on the intercooler inlet? You want the liquid to gas phase change in the intercooler as that is when it is absorbing heat. You will then have to play around with different size restrictors to match the needs. At least need a temp probe on the gas outlet.
As many others said, it's about the latent heat/thermal mass. The A2W IC is designed to transfer heat to liquid with high thermal mass. You need more area, more pressure (or more time) if you're going to transfer to a gas medium.
Pressurize the intercooler line open the bottle all the way open and release the co2 after it has gone through the intercooler . Making the intercooler lines part of the co2 bottle .have your valve after the intercooler open it there and your intercooler will freeze the same as the bottle does when releasing all the Pressure
The killer chiller system might get you closer to where you want to be. Although since it relies on the A.C. of a car I don't know if it could be used in a dyno room.
What about cooling intercooler with liquid propane and have it phase change inside the IC then the gaseous warm propane could be piped into the intake? or would that not work? lol. just some random thought i had
Water removes 25x more heat than gas/air. If you use the CO2 to chill the water it will be waaaay more effective. Like a cascade refrigeration system. Et al glycol systems etc. id like to mess with some refrigeration techniques, heat exchangers etc. would be interesting
At one atmosphere and 0 degrees C, the density of CO2 gas is 1.977 grams per liter. Water is 1kg per liter or a ratio of 505.817 to 1 by volume compared to CO2. Volume of Liquid CO2 at 300 psig is 0.9852 liters per kg. Almost the exact same volume to weight ratio as water. The second you transition it from a liquid to a gas its density is lower than water up to a ratio of over 500 times at O degrees Celsius. It is just not dense enough to work with an water to air intercooler. Solution - Get an air to air intercooler, some card board and some gorrilla tape. Make a sealed box on one side of the intercooler an spay the CO2 into the box.
As an energy auditor, I’ve built a number of excel based energy auditing tools. I ran the numbers on air vs. water...and this is what you get... Btu to raise I cu ft 1 degree f Water : 498.46 btu Air : 0.18 btu Thus, it takes 2769 times more heat energy to raise water 1 degree than air. Also, Water has over 4,000 times the capacity to transfer heat per unit volume than water! That’s why a water to air core is tiny, and an air to air is giant
Not enough mass = not enough specific heat. To get the differential you could run antifreeze and chill the water down below zero. But, that will never be allowed at the track. Salt water, though? A fairly heavy brine might work and I dunno if there's rules against that at the track.
It may be a leidenfrost effect. Basically it could be the co2 is trying to boil from the hot surface creating a gas barrier preventing it from actually cooling the pipes. The same effect happens when you pour liquid nitrogen on your hand, it won’t do anything unless you soak your hand in it
It needs to be more like a recrigeration system. Liquid from the cylinder to a txv (oriface plate) to allow the liquid to flash to gas giving you the cooling as the state change happens. The tough part is figuring the liquid line and exhaist line sizes as well as how big the oriface needs to be. This will allow the whole coil to be cooled. With the current setup odds are you are making the first few inches of the coil cold and not much else.
It could be reduced latent heat transfer from restricted airflow through the exchanger. My theory is that the co2 charge is so cold that it freezes the moisture in the intake charge directly to the exchanger thus reducing airflow through it. It may only be on 1/4 of the exchanger so not enough to restrict the inlet of the engine but enough to allow intake temps to rise. Another theory is that you might not have gotten all of the water out of the exchanger and the co2 froze the water and stopped the flow of co2.
Have you thought about feeding the air to water with a solution of alcohol and water in a tub, with dry ice immersed? Should get you close to 0°, while having better thermal absorption than a gas.
I ran a DEI Cry02 on my skyline with side mount inter cooler. I had it going through two in-line 3” pipe “bulbs” first at the throttle body, 2nd after the side mount and the waste spray directly onto the face of the inter cooler. Without touching boost controller, boost climbed 3psi and temp dropped 15-20deg C at top. (Intercooler pipes had condensation like an A/C pipe). Cry02 for the win.
Need an orifice at the entrance to the intercooler to allow the co2 to go from high to low pressure. Also invert the bottle upside down to get pure liquid co2.
The answer's much easier than all of you think: - The tank in your test laid strait letting only gas out, not the liquid, that's why it didn't work. - Take a look at the tank, it's lower part frosts after the pressure drop right where the fluid is. - Just pop the tank upside down, so the liquid part of CO2 is below the gas part and you're good to go. As a lot of people noticed right, cooling effect is obtained by a phase change of CO2 from liquid state to gas, which will in this case happen right where you need - in the pipeline and in the intercooler. Also make sure the lines are as short as possible. Can't wait to see the correct test!
Bottle needs to be upside down so liquid is flowing to intercooler. You need a restricting orifice on the inlet side of the cooler. This will cause pressure drop and liquid to boil off....absorbing heat. This is how an evaporator coil works in a refrigeration system. May have to experiment a little to get orifice size right.
You would have to put a huge restrictor on the outlet side. Like a small .050 nitrous jet. And hold the co2 in the core with only a small amount exiting You we’re just blowing it threw and it had no mass to absorb the heat. And to make matters worse it was probably frosting Over the inner core and impeding flow by just blowing a ton threw it all at once. The better test would be to run Freon threw it but you need a pretty stout core to handle that I’ve seen that done with great results
You might try Fluorinert and put dry ice in it. Flourinert + dry ice was used for computer cooling overclocking records. Now they just use straight liquid nitrogen (not recommended in a2w IC). If you try it, have good ventilation or a way to recapture the out gassing cow from the flourinert.
There's too much thermal expansion and the air-to-water intercooler is very similar to a AC unit either on the condenser or the evaporator where you have to have some type of metering valve allowing the fluid to exit in a controlled way
On a side note, would love to see a test on fuel temp. As a lot of the old timer drag racers ive seen run an ice box for the fuel before the carb etc. Also how about an up stream injector or two suppling fuel to the engine but having more time to atomise/evap etc to see a difference in intake temps. While youre at it, how about plain old water injection effect on intake temps and power output. Would love to see definitive proof once and for all. Cheers
Hi guys I’ve tried this also and I restricted the exhaust of the cooler. Filled a nitrous bottle so I can get liquid co2 to the cooler I spray for 20 sec. the cooler gets DEEP frozen like -20f and since I’m running rear mount turbos the outlet temps are low. I have 122f @6psi in to the cooler and have 19f going out but only testing so far
Richard, I am not sure if it has been mentioned, but try running the L2A with dry ice and a medium similar to fuel stabilizer. If agitated enough the mixture can get as low as -176°F.
I wonder if the air has too much velocity to dissipate the heat in that intercooler for a significant improvement. Also curious if the Co2 gas or any gas for that matter just sucks at taking heat away. It is already less dense than a liquid so how is it to absorb that heat energy as well as a liquid.
As someone has already said, liquid seems to be a far better exchange medium. Example: I'm a pool equipment repair tech. Lets say Monday is 85 degrees and the water is 85 degrees. If a cold front comes in overnight and the next morning its 40 degrees. That pool water will feel warm all day because it retains its heat for most of the day. But how long does it take to lower the temp of your house when you come home and its 80 degrees. You turn the AC on and its 70 degrees in 20 minutes. Just my take
You need liquid, water with salt added to get its temp down for flow, then circulate that with either ice or dry ice package so it’s not directly contacting water for thermal transfer, could net seriously lower inlet temps, remember Moroso fuel cool cans, similar theory just larger scale, thermal mass needs to Be enough to absorb the heat generated. Love the work your putting in👍
The core of the air to water intercooler needs to have a design of an evaporator core, the fin/plate design of an air/water IC won't distribute the CO2 evenly, unlike water or a fluid, a gas requires set directional path across the entire core in order to gain the most heat exchange. However an orifice on the inlet side of the air/water I/C would enable to CO2 to disperse better for that O2/H2O intercooler.
Richard Holdener Increase the discharge hose diameter. Might be restricting flow. Sanity check, put a pressure gauge in the inlet & outlet. Possible the liquid is forming solid dry ice and blocking the core..Could even try nitrous..
If you have any part of the aftercooler surface facing the incoming airflow below zero degrees, it will frost up on that surface, blocking flow. Your best efficiency if you stay above frost is to cool a liquid coolant for the aftercooler to just barely below freezing, as that will result in a temperature gradient between the coolant side of the aftercooler heat transfer surface and the intake air side of the aftercooler heat transfer surface that ends up with the surface facing the intake air merely being near zero, but not quite at it, so you will get (helpful) condensation, but NO frost to block up your passages. Then, you need a GREAT deal of flow of coolant going the OPPPOSITE DIRECTION as the intake air, so the freshly-heated intake air faces the warmest coolant, and the already-partially-cooled intake air faces the coldest coolant. Cooling your intake charge to below zero will work, IF you carefully defrost the coils during the run by cooling the intake air in stages, and that is wildly impractical for most cars, as they would have to have dual coils: one operating while the other defrosts. The practical lower limit of aftercooling is just above freezing. You can go lower for an experiment, but your one way to do that with relatively cheap technology is to rent a reefer container with lots of thermal inertia in its cargo, such as many small bottles of frozen water that your reefer container can than drop to as far below freezing as you want. Then, you run the intake air into one end of the container, and have it exit from the other end, so you are almost completely dehumidifying your intake air before it even touches the turbo. THEN you cool THAT dry air down to whatever low temperature you wish. As you can tell, the logistics of performing such and experiment mean either Alaska or a huge setup to eliminate moisture before it can clog aftercooler passages as frost. But, for maximum aftercooling, a liquid cooled to just barely below freezing provided in GREAT abundance to a liquid-to-air aftercooler core. is the way to go. Your incoming liquid has to be at about 0.01 degrees above freezing, and it would preferably leave the core at about 1 degree, due to the overwhelming abundance of coolant being thrown through it.
Are you getting liquid Co2 or gaseous Co2 going into the intercooler? Are you getting liquid Co2 out? Ideally you want 100% liquid going in at a rate that 99% of what's exiting is exiting as a gas, though I suspect the outlet of the intercooler is not large enough to allow that rate of phase change. I also question at what point is the air simply passing through the intercooler to fast for the thermal exchange to occur?
LN2 is often used for max overclocks of computer CPU where excessive temps cause failures and melted silicon. The transfer method is usually just an open pot of liquid on the heat transfer plate allowing the liquid to evaporate, the same method as using a dry ice intercooler. Recon main problem with LN2 in an open pot would be keeping liquid over the transfer plate as the vehicle accelerates, and also stopping the fuel from freeze -60'C. Would be great to see what can be achieved on the Dyno, Have Fun.
First off, I think the A/F intercooler is designed for wet use, ie fluid movement. The issue is, you have no way possible to keep the co2 liquid, I assume the exit is open ended. Now here's what i'd try, Frozen co2 bricks in a water tank with water (or possibly an antifreeze type coolant). You should hit your target temps that way. Dodge uses a Freon intercooler on the Demon, But it's a fully pressurized system so only the liquid freon is used for cooling, no gas is used
Topic for another video but have you thought of doing an SRT Demon style charge cooler with air conditioning? (I think they call it the power chiller) It would be a mess in California so you have my condolences. Like a blower it will cost some power but how much extra is it worth?
Yeah turbo John is a genius he does everything for cheap but I think the bottle should have been sitting straight up and then turn it on I think liquid was going down in there which was causing it not to run correctly. The second thing you need to get a large spray nozzle connected to it like a nitrous line have it go straight into the throttle body
@@blackman8795 you want them to shoot carbon dioxide straight into the throttle body ? thats going to kill power like crazy by displacing oxygen and it may even just cut the motor running all together. Co2 is what comes out your exhaust and it doesnt burn so will kill power or just stop it running all together.
ive seen some compressed air supercharging done before..which is completely impractical, but i was referring to a small high pressure line right out of a bottle (4500ish psi) entering the intake piping just before the throttle body..I'm not sure on the exact discharge temp but it is definitely cold enough to almost instantly freeze your skin. Whether or not it would work, i have no idea but it seems like it would be more effective than spraying a compressed gas into an intercooler.
You need cores optimized for expansion cooling like automotive a/c evap cores. Take two of them in a "v" configuration with the turbo side going into the open part of the v and intake side at the bottom.
Great channel,thanks! I'm thinking the air volume going through the intercooler is faster then the CO2 can cool thel charge, in other words I believe you need more surface area with CO2 in it for the air to go through (intercooler) before it enters the intake manifold.
Yeah, I'd try a valve on the outlet, to provide a adjustable restriction! If the intercooler could be filled with liquid Co2, it would be much cooler, but would need to off gas to remain cold, maybe the tank can't flow enough Co2? But HEY! Nitrous is cold too! And it is designed to flow liquid!
You need more volume of c02 inside the intercooler to fill up the tanks a restrictor valve on the back side to keep more volume in the intercooler is the trick. I think. Saturating the tanks with c02 will freeze the intercooler.. sending more volume thru without a restrictor the c02 is just touch and go it doesn't get a chance to soak into the metal.. it almost needs to be compressed like a aircondition system
Its the phase change that generates the cooling.. the same way heat is released when gas is compressed, cooling occurs when decompressed.. just make sure the decompression event occurs at the intercooler fins for best results.
Also the air is already cold using dyno water, c02 won't pull the heat as well as water as others have already said, I'd like to see you test fuel temperatures and their effects on power
I wanted to chime in here, back in the 80s I was a Product Engineer on the GM "G" bodies. I personally owned an 87 Grand National. I swapped the 3.8 out for a 4.1, forged pistons, etc.... I modified the stock intercooler by sealing off the front and back, installed a drain cock in the bottom and created an opening in the top. I would pour liquid nitrogen in the top of the intercooler which was good for a 1/4 mile run. The air going into the throttle body was at -15°F. I also used water injection (there was a port on the ECM for that!). Horsepower was at 445, my quarter mile runs were 11.41. I attempted nitrous, however the 200R4 would not hold up. For anyone with back issues of Turbo magazine (late 80s), the car was featured in a Turbo Magazine issue.
@@richardholdener1727 I remember as an engineering experiment, we created a Turbo Regal El Camino., we used the front end and dash from a 4 door Regal, the power train from the Grand National. Tons of photographers from magazines, then the vehicle was scrapped!
It would be interesting to run ethanol or acetone through the inter cooler then put some dry ice in the water box and pump the super cold liquid through the ic.
Circulate either coolant chilled with dry ice. Or pure alcohol with dry ice. I once did it with coolant. It's not liquid enough . My next step was alcohol. But I'm just not sure or the capability of alcohol to transfer heat. I'm sure you can find a good alternative Richard !
It has to do with the density of your transfer media. As well as the shape of the charge cooler. Carbon dioxide is far less dense than water. Air density is roughly 750 times less dense then water. For a phase transfer type intercooler to work, you would need to expose more of the media to heat by increasing surface area. A better use of a phase transfer would be to utilize the cooling and expansion of a gas in conjunction with water as the transfer media. More like a killer chiller type system that cools the water making it more efficient as a transfer media.
The co2 gas gets cold at the spot where the pressure drop occurs. I am guessing 5 or 6 nitrous jets on the cold water side of the intercooler and running the co2 tank upside down to feed them liquid co2? Kind of like the orifice tube in an auto ac system.
Need to keep pressure of the co2 higher in the inter cooler so it will get colder. Or ad air conditioning to the inter coolers maybe some Peltier devices to the intercooler I was thinking about trying that but have to get rid of the heat they make cold on one side hot on the other
As other commitments said, you need it to be liquid in the intercooler, a more effective solution could be dry ice and alcohol (isopropyl or something with a nice low freezing temperature) in a cooler (don't seal it shut or it will explode) with a pump to circulate it through the intercooler and back to the cooler. That way your dry ice can take its time to cool down the alcohol and the intercooler core before the run.
Spot on...do this all the time for science demos in schools. Plus you can freeze roses and grapes and shatter them too. 😁
I'd like to Richard test this.
Steven W I can see by the co2 bottle being frozen that the phase change is happening inside the bottle. The co2 needs to be compressed and liquid all the way to the intercooler. Once inside the intercooler it can be released and the phase change will happen where actually needed to realize the full benefit of the latent heat of vaporization. The intercooler needs to be supercooled not the bottle.
This is the right solution.
You guys need to take a page from the PC builder's playbook and learn to LN2 cool it.
Liquids are far more effective at removing latent heat than gases are.
Air to air intercoolers are built with thin metal in the core to get as much efficiency as possible from using gas (air) as well. Water to air intercoolers are constructed thicker to keep water from getting into the intake plus water cools better than air does. I'd like to see Holdener use something like liquid nitrogen circulating through a water to air intercooler.
CO2 is a liquid under pressure which is what is so cold.
The temperature change comes from the phase change. It's working like a vapour compression refrigeration cycle. The temperature of the liquid CO2 is obviously not -120°f. It's the same temperature as ambient, it absorbs heat as it evaporates.
Problem with co2 when coming out of a bottle is that its temp drops so hard you get dry ice flakes . Now the issue becomes sublimation it skips the most effective form of heat transfer which is liquid , so now youre just blowing snow flakes past the core and nothing sticks to make the transfer
@@livetorace163 liquid nitrogen is a stable cold liquid try it.
I'm no gas expert so I think it's flow.
Can you do a air to air cooler with a fogger co2 spray over the core and see how that works?
Lets get into the details, that's where power is made anyway.
The specific heat of Carbon Dioxide/CO2 by mass is .839
The specific heat of Water/H2O by mass is 4.1813 or around 4.2 by volume
If you take into consideration that CO2 is drastically lower mas per volume(the intercooler is a set volume) than it is easy to understand the results.
Interestingly the specific heat of air at sea level is 1.0035 by mass, which means pumping room air through the intercooler would have been more effective over time.
The results you got worked as well as they did because the CO2 evaporating was very cold and cooled off the intercooler(which being made of aluminum has a specific heat of .897 by mass or 2.422 by volume).
The summery of all that is that the higher the specific heat, the more energy it takes to heat it up. Because energy moves from high to low (like heat) the water literally sucks the heat out of the air better than the CO2.
The best solution is to use the highest specific heat medium by volume (which happens to be water) and make it as cold as possible. The issue is Water freezes at 32F/0C which means you can't use it to get sub zero.
A 'possible' solution is to run antifreeze and dry ice. The issue with that is that Ethylene Glycol has a specific heat of 2.42 by mass which is about half of water, but even worse, it's less dense so its only 1/3 the specific heat of water by volume. You can add more water which raises its specific heat but lowers also raises its freezing point.
Propylene Glycol has higher specific heat but is higher viscosity so would be harder to pump through the intercooler.
I suggest you re-run the test with 50/50 Ethylene Glycol with dry ice and keep adding water/diluting it with water till freezing becomes an issue... buy a lot of dry ice.
This is really good. I like this. I would use methanol as opposed to a glycol antifreeze. It has a freezing point of about -145°f, a specific heat of 2.52 and a density of .79. It is glycol antifreeze on steroids for this application. You don't have to worry about it freezing at all and the viscosity isn't as high as ethylene or propylene glycol. The volume energy density is 48% that of water. It's actually higher than antifreeze solutions. Still what I would do is run two air to water charge coolers. The first one with dyno water. It's really effective and the output temperature is in the 80s as opposed to the 250s as it comes out of the compressor. The second air to water cooler I would circulate methanol that's dry ice cooled. When it hits the second stage if everything is working the liquid will be -109f, the sublimation temperature of dry ice. The issue you have is you need a second charge cooler, a reservoir, pump and connections that can all handle methanol and the reservoir needs to be huge. The enthalpy of sublimation is awesome, 571kj/kg. Ya, it's 1.7x the heat of fusion of water and the density of dry ice is 1.4-1.6. A reservoir with methanol and dry ice would work, why it needs to be huge is because as the dry ice sublimates it does not add to the volume of circulating liquid as ice in a water tank does. The reservoir needs to hold enough liquid to circulate with no dry ice and enough to submerge the dry ice. You could.do it with this one stage but the idea is to super cool the air charge and it's easier to cool an air charge that's already half way from 250f to -110f.
Dodge uses A/C on their intercooler and Mercedes is using CO2 for their A/C systems. Go.
Would be cool to see you test one of those interchillers
Judging by the Ice Line on the CO2 tank the liquid level was below the valve. Prop up the bottom of the bottle so liquid CO2 is coming out the hose.
With liquid CO2 going to the intercooler it will work.
And let the IC get frosty first 😉
Yep my thoughts as well
Uh, CO2 doesn't have a liquid state
@@watrousmark401 CO2 does have a liquid state, and a solid state just google a CO2 phase diagram.
@@watrousmark401 Are you sure??
If it does not then the experiment will not work at all.
Flip the bottle upside down ( well that's what Scotty cannon says to do) ....you want liquid co2 going in, not just gas passing through , basically dry ice the core ,so a small restrictor on exit
You can also get liquid discharging bottles with dip tubes, but yeah
Pre cool the water with the co2 down to near freezing while adding some drink called Fireball so the fluid wont freeze
Personally I blame squirrels
Or woodchucks
Those little bastard squirrels ate the plastic gas cap on my garden tractor this year. Every year they eat a cap on a lawn mower or some other piece of equipment.
@@fascistpedant758
Same but different , I heard somewhere that alot of wire insulation is derived from a corn based material......no wonder rodents like to chew wires.
I do generator service and I'll just say I hate meeces to peeces.
Richard, use a liquid intercooler with a rad to cool the water and spray the rad with the co2. If you set it up with multiple spray jets on the co2 to give good coverage to the rad you will get temps down and power up nicely.
Really love your shows, keep up the interesting tech articles! (UK fan)
running an air to air inter-cooler and just spraying the liquid co2 onto it allowing it to frost onto the cooler might work better. Having the C02 running through an air to water intercooler and not having it change state your just dealing with thermal conductivity and the incoming temp of the co2
I agree gas doesn't transfer heat like a liquid. I wonder if he is loosing airflow too through the intercooler due to moisture from the ambient air freezing inside the intercooler.
I would actually do both. Have the air to water with dyno water, it leaves that at 80-82°f as opposed to the 240+F out of the compressor. Put that 80f air charge through a air to air and spray the outside with CO2 or a second air to water with CO2. There is too much heat for the cryogenic gas to absorb. If you take a bunch of heat out first the Carbon Dioxide has a chance.
would it be a bad idea to spray co2 on the outside of a air to water intercololer much like you would do with an air to air intercooler? i would think it would work but my worry would be that while spraying the air to water intercooler the low temps of the co2 could freeze the liquid inside of the air to water intercooler if it doesnt have enough antifreeze in it. but so long as you use antifreeze shouldnt it be safe to spray an air to water intercooler with co2?
It may be a mater of cooling the water with the co2, the water would have a better effect of cooling the core than the gas.
@@denniswhite2768 You can only get the water so cold its may be better that under high loads just have a small bottle of Freon or c02 or nitrous spray onto the intercooler to chill the circulating water
It’s like your dealing with refrigeration and it needs a certain sized orifice to get the right drop across the inter cooler core, using liquid up to the orifice and vapor inside the inter cooler but monitoring the exit like a txv
Bear Fulmer I'm with you in that one. He would need some kind of variable txv to deal with the rather large window of temp change through the cooler from the boost curve, as compared to the narrower temp change window a typical refrigeration system would deal with
The fact is, it's colder. But the cold will allow you to put more boost and more timing and than you get more power, power that you couldn't get without cooling.
Right away you are running a gas through a cooler made for a fluid with the density of water. To confirm the problem temperature of the gas going in VS out would need to be recorded. To do it with cold gas you need an Air to air inter cooler that has a manifold feeding and exhausting the gas to ensure it has a chance to remove the required amount of heat. Without going into any math it would need to be VERY large in comparison to a normal unit considering the amount of heat transfer required. To do it properly you need to think of it like a car AC and a TX valve. To draw the maximum amount of heat with the CO2 you want it to transition from a liquid to a gas inside the cooler or just before. However the cooler wouldn't be made for the safe handling of the potential pressure that the CO2 could produce. there are a few ways it could be done but each has it's own inherent problems. CO2 liquid handling is tricky.
Firstly you need to have a proper cryogenic bottle that will allow the tapping of liquid CO2 and not just a welding gas bottle. A -8 line with a liquid feed to a primary regulator directly feeding the compensating regulator then into the heat exchanger. The pressure and temp inside the heat exchanger will need to be controlled to keep the transition act continuing to occur without freezing solid with CO2. It could be done but a controller and some complex valves would be required. Really not even slightly practical. The reason why it isn't used as a refrigerant.
A proper refrigerant is required to be handled practically so the only decision is what medium to use? Butane boils off at -1c at atmospheric pressure so that's no good it wont get the temp you want. R134a wont get cold enough either but plumbed up using the cooler like the evaporator it would be effective and has proven itself in this app but sadly it wont go below -40c. The external system would need to be huge. Not Practical. You could use SO2 but that is awful stuff to handle and even the tiniest leak has people running. I would suggest methane as the most practical medium through the inter cooler as it transitions at -162c any colder than that and the air will start to fall apart. Of course if you don't like the risk with methane there is always liquid Argon at -182c that will get it frosty. LOL
But seriously you just want the coldest you can get it to without it becoming a NASA engineering project. Get some Silicone Heat Transfer Fluid and a mag drive pump, a car radiator a tray that it will fit in and 20 lbs of dry ice. Fill the cooling side of the heat exchanger and plumb to the pump and radiator. submerge the radiator in the same oil and then bury it in dry ice. That will get you -80c liquid into your inter cooler. That should get the charge temp down providing the inter cooler is big enough. I wonder what you did?
CO2 is used as a refrigerant.
@@fascistpedant758 Yes but not very effective though.
@@dazaspc It's effective, but requires high operating pressure and low condenser temperatures. It's often used on ships where the high operating pressures require smaller compressors, saving space, and the cold ocean water can be used to cool the condenser.
@@fascistpedant758 OK I had never encountered it.
Cheers
I'd like to see one of these testing different barometric pressures. Very interesting
Wrong type of intercooler? I wonder if instead of running Co2 through an air to water if it would have better effect to spray Co2 onto an air to air (CRYO2 make kits for that)
The issue with the cryo sprayers is you have to keep refilling it. I'm thinking that he's looking for something you don't have to keep refilling and it's more consistent temperatures vs what intercooler sprayers can offer.
Treat this like an evaporator. Reduce the flow drastically just prior to entering the intercooler. In my mind you don’t even need to run the engine. Restrict flow in and measure the temp of the cooler. Repeat until you create what is desired. Also I’m curious what restricting flow out of the cooler will effect. Also this is hands down the best scientifically based engine channel on RUclips. Awesome info with brutal honesty. Can’t say thank you enough!
100%. Do your research on how an ac system works. FYI there are guys here in Australia using ac gas to air type coolers under twin screw blowers as intercoolers. Using the vehicles factory ac pump.
I really enjoy the newer video format very cool stuff Holdener
Just like refrigeration you need a larger surface area when you want to quickly cool large volumes of air
Refrigeration is more efficient than water to air or air to air but it the 6 degree split across the heat exchange is difficult to control if you are aiming for 0 degree air intake temp
-Possibly the core was icing up? not flowing enough CO2? or even not enough thermal mass especially if it was warming up at the IC discharge pipe.
An option from the CPU overclocking community is to use Acetone as the working fluid in the intercooler. Much the same way as water ice except this time you use Dry Ice. Acetone has a melting point of -95°C (-138°F,) which plays really nice with CO2 (dry ice's) sublimation temperature of -78°C.
Thus you can't freeze the acetone with dry ice. Also acetone has a boiling point of 50°C so as the fluid heats up during the run you're still not likely to boil it off (a problem with gaseous working mediums; remember that liquids transfer heat way better than gases.) Especially if you've got plenty of excess Dry ice in the cooling chest. Acetone has a specific heat of ~2kJ/(kg K) (about half that of water,) so it will heat up more quickly, but in a short dyno run, that's not really an issue if you have enough in the ice chest with more Dry Ice.
I estimte you'd want 20-30L (or quarts / 5-6Gallons? sorry Australian) of acetone with a supply of 30-50kg (100lbs?) of dry ice to cool it down. Though I'd start by leaving the acetone in the freezer over night to get a head start ;)
This is a test I'd love to see :D
This is about perfect for extreme intercooling
Best channel on youtube hands down. Running the tests na and then turbo at various boost levels is great :)
1 thing that water does have to its advantage is mass and it's inherent ability to transfer heat. The thing that you are fighting is the energy of the co2 is being used up before it can make it out the other side. 1 route to look at may be a twin feed and twin vent. Or alternately you could all science class and open up 1 side of the intercooler weld a box on it and run a dry ice loaded onto it.
How many gallons of water during a run? It's way easier to cool water with ice than come up with pounds of liquid CO2. The latent heat is not terribly different and you can put 20lbs of ice in a tank.
More than likely it is CO2 gas flowing not liquid. Just not enough mass flowing through.
common CO2 manifold feeding through inter-cooler at different points, regulator out of bottle.
Part of the problem with reaching the potential of this configuration is that the co2 flow and cooling capacity is dropping as the pressure in the tank drops, at the same time, at higher rpm there is increased airflow through the core which would require more refrigerant flow to keep up. More capacity/ larger tank(s) would help. I'd try to control the flow / pressure in the test more tightly. More instrumentation would be helpful... Need to add bottle pressure, IC inlet and outlet temp on both the air and refrigerant side.
Do you know the mass throughput of the CO2, the weight of CO2 per minute.
vs the weight of water going through the intercooler.
Could be a case of a small mass of very cold CO2 vs a large mass of tepid water, comparatively.
Quality vs Quantity perhaps?
Your not addressing air density, only temp. You need a weather station and look at humidity vs temp. When are you going to mist water or meth straight into the turbos?
I don't quite have time to read the other comments right now, but what I think is happening is that you're getting an insulating layer of ice building up on the inside of the cooler from the extremely low temperature of the CO2. This will prevent some of the heat transfer from the air into the intercooler cold side. Just like when playing with a CO2 fire extinguisher, as soon as you release it to low pressure state it phase changes to gas and does the extreme temperature drop - this causes condensation which creates an ice buildup. I'll check the other comments when I have a chance to see what other people are thinking.
Since that is a liquid intercooler, try this: Make an insulated reservoir. Put acetone in it. Put dry ice in the acetone. Wait for bubbling to basically stop. Now pump that chilled acetone through the intercooler.
Is there a turning point where the air charge could be too cold? To the point that the fuel doesn't want to evaporate.
Should run an orifice ( like how an AC system works) right in front of the intercooler so it forces a phase shift inside the cooler.
Maybe even run an AC system as an intercooler
Always wondered what liquid nitrogen would do poured into water to air cooler with a little breather screwed on after filling? Would love to see some testing
Nice video as usual. Bench racers scenerios brought to life. Btw, like the glasses. Professor Horsepower.
Do you think you would see a change when it is 100F with 80% Humidity? Like in North Carolina. 65F is pretty damn nice temps so you are not going to see much in change. I know from my Butt Dyno when I drive my Cummins Diesel at ~32F it seems makes less power compared at 60F on a cool morning.
You should try hooking up an AC compressor to the engine and running R134 through that intercooler. See if the cooling property can overcome the parasitic loss of the compressor
Dodge does this from the factory
@@wainfiggitty nice. Would be cool to see Richard set it up on an ls
is the intercooler clogging up with ice or frost?
What if you supercooled the water with C02 and mixed in antifreeze so it doesnt freeze.
And try running it through a evaporator core. Liquids and gasses have different properties, gases the atoms are spread out more so the gas will warm up faster due to less mass then water so you might also need to run it through faster. Loved the video man I would really love to see something like this work cuz It could really change the industry
according to thermo dynamics you should be able to use the AC system from the stock engine to cool down the charge air and gain more power than the AC pump consumes , since AC cycles are more than 100% efficient and up to 250% efficient. on paper. would be neat to see the difference on the dyno. dodge obviously has used it lately but what is the dyno difference if you dedicate the entire AC system to only cooling the charge air. and what about on a NA set up as well.
Use two (2) intercoolers
1. The standard air/water cooler you have used on all the other tests.
2. Air/Air spraying liquid CO2, on the outside. This will take out all the humidity (water) in the air. Making the air denser.
Also dry air loves liquid droplets of fuel.
Would a air to air intercooler work better since the plates are usually thinner and the co2 is probably staying in gas state
Great project! The heat transfer coefficient of the gaseous CO2 is worse than water, and as others pointed out the heat capacity of CO2 is 5x lower than water. Both of those reduce the effectiveness of the intercooler. The result is that you need a bigger cooler, and as your intuition told you, more flow. CO2 will keep dragging the air temp down if it has more tube area to work over, because it’s so much colder than the charge air coming out of the compressor. But unlike the water that stays at almost the same temperature as it goes through the cooler, at the same flow rate, CO2 would heat up about as fast as the air as it passes through the cooler. The heat capacity of air is 1.0[kJ/kgK], similar to the CO2 gas at about 0.75[kJ/kgK]) so it needs more tube area to work over in order to pull the air temp down. Essentially, the intercooler effectiveness is reduced due to the change to CO2 but you gain the potential to cool down to a much lower air temp by changing to a cryogenic cooling medium.
PS - I’m still interested in accepting your challenge to tune that carburetor not to go rich with increasing rpm!
Very interesting, you’re a thinker and your material is way ahead of anything I’ve seen.love out of the box thinking and then testing it on the dyno . Trying to watch all your test, enjoyed the one on the LS rocker arms.Glad you used the little B T R torque cam it made good power.
Liquid pulls heat at 14x the rate of gas with aluminum core. So it’s basically functioning like an air to air intercooler with c02 but the core size is much smaller than most air to airs on this size setup.
I’ve water would probably work much better, id be interested what would happen if you used ice water in the cooler and used c02 at the turbo inlet to decrease the temp of air starting at the turbo
I set up and built a propane fuelled 20b 3 rotor rotary rx8, i ran my gas lines into the barrel intercooler instead of water, before gas was sent to reducer and heated there to create vapour injection. .
What I saw was extremely promising, and I think the difference here is that the more boost and flow, the more heat builds but also the more gas flows. So temps stay constant throughout the range.
Your co2 just needs to increase to scale as revs/heat/boost increases.
Lpg/propane is extremely misunderstood and misrepresented, mainly due to most gas cars running dual fuel systems. By running Solo gas, the tune can be done optimum to suit the gas. Not to mention the use of correct plugs etc.
Dual fuel cars are rubbish.
Good vids btw. Super informative 👌
I always love Richard's testing !! Hey Richard can you do a triple intercooler # 1 water to air before the turbo # 2 water to air charge air then #3 run the holley intake with the intercooler and run them all with ice water !! See if you can get the charged air temp to 0 !!!
no IC before-too much restriction
Gotta flood evaporator, or in this case your intercooler. Your superheating your co2. Its all boiling away withing the first few inches. You may want to try a tank of 134a or simmular low presssure refrigerant and on the exhust side maybe restrict it just slightly maybe to 1/4 so to keep the pressure up and the refriferant a liquid longer. Liquid nitrogen sounds good too. Im not sure of the operating pressures u want with that for 0deg. Have to download a p/t chart. Cant wait to see if u get this going.
you need it to work like a a/c or refrigerator and it could work well, have the hose out of the intercooler much larger than the inlet pipe that way there is a drop of pressure through the intercooler, that will mean that the co2 is absorbing energy to expand which will cool your IAT's and give best possible results.
but as others have said the fact that its a gas, it might just not have enough thermal capacity for the cooling?
Turbo John was recently working on this same thing. Perhaps check out his channel. I do remember that his video showed the core freezing on the inlet side then by the time it reached the outlet side it was close to ambient. May have to freeze the entire core before a run?
Couldn't see your whole setup. Did you invert the tank to spray liquid into the intercooler? Laying on its side may work for a limited time, but use a nitrous bottle stand to invert it completely. Do you have a restrictor on the intercooler inlet? You want the liquid to gas phase change in the intercooler as that is when it is absorbing heat. You will then have to play around with different size restrictors to match the needs. At least need a temp probe on the gas outlet.
As many others said, it's about the latent heat/thermal mass. The A2W IC is designed to transfer heat to liquid with high thermal mass. You need more area, more pressure (or more time) if you're going to transfer to a gas medium.
Seems like you need to slow the flow down after the ic. So it can flood the ic. But no clue how you would achieve that
You will need an inter chiller setup to lower IAT further more it’s an interesting method using the compressor
Pressurize the intercooler line open the bottle all the way open and release the co2 after it has gone through the intercooler . Making the intercooler lines part of the co2 bottle .have your valve after the intercooler open it there and your intercooler will freeze the same as the bottle does when releasing all the Pressure
The killer chiller system might get you closer to where you want to be. Although since it relies on the A.C. of a car I don't know if it could be used in a dyno room.
Can you run both inter coolers air to air and air to water see if that makes a difference in charge temp
What about cooling intercooler with liquid propane and have it phase change inside the IC then the gaseous warm propane could be piped into the intake? or would that not work? lol. just some random thought i had
Water removes 25x more heat than gas/air. If you use the CO2 to chill the water it will be waaaay more effective. Like a cascade refrigeration system. Et al glycol systems etc. id like to mess with some refrigeration techniques, heat exchangers etc. would be interesting
Liquid helium has the lowest freezing point. Which is 1° above absolute zero @-272°. Do you think thats cold enough??😂
At one atmosphere and 0 degrees C, the density of CO2 gas is 1.977 grams per liter. Water is 1kg per liter or a ratio of 505.817 to 1 by volume compared to CO2. Volume of Liquid CO2 at 300 psig is 0.9852 liters per kg. Almost the exact same volume to weight ratio as water. The second you transition it from a liquid to a gas its density is lower than water up to a ratio of over 500 times at O degrees Celsius. It is just not dense enough to work with an water to air intercooler.
Solution - Get an air to air intercooler, some card board and some gorrilla tape. Make a sealed box on one side of the intercooler an spay the CO2 into the box.
As an energy auditor, I’ve built a number of excel based energy auditing tools.
I ran the numbers on air vs. water...and this is what you get...
Btu to raise I cu ft 1 degree f
Water : 498.46 btu
Air : 0.18 btu
Thus, it takes 2769 times more heat energy to raise water 1 degree than air.
Also, Water has over 4,000 times the capacity to transfer heat per unit volume than water!
That’s why a water to air core is tiny, and an air to air is giant
Are you BPI certified?
Adrian OCNJ
HERS Rater
WAP ( Weatherization Assistance Program)
No BPI
One cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 lbs, thus by definition, it requires 62.4 BTU/deg. F.
Fascist Pedant
You’re correct...
I incorrectly multiplied the correct value by 8
Appreciate the correction
Not enough mass = not enough specific heat.
To get the differential you could run antifreeze and chill the water down below zero.
But, that will never be allowed at the track.
Salt water, though? A fairly heavy brine might work and I dunno if there's rules against that at the track.
It may be a leidenfrost effect. Basically it could be the co2 is trying to boil from the hot surface creating a gas barrier preventing it from actually cooling the pipes. The same effect happens when you pour liquid nitrogen on your hand, it won’t do anything unless you soak your hand in it
Did parts of the intercooler freeze up, reducing airflow?
It needs to be more like a recrigeration system. Liquid from the cylinder to a txv (oriface plate) to allow the liquid to flash to gas giving you the cooling as the state change happens. The tough part is figuring the liquid line and exhaist line sizes as well as how big the oriface needs to be. This will allow the whole coil to be cooled. With the current setup odds are you are making the first few inches of the coil cold and not much else.
It could be reduced latent heat transfer from restricted airflow through the exchanger. My theory is that the co2 charge is so cold that it freezes the moisture in the intake charge directly to the exchanger thus reducing airflow through it. It may only be on 1/4 of the exchanger so not enough to restrict the inlet of the engine but enough to allow intake temps to rise.
Another theory is that you might not have gotten all of the water out of the exchanger and the co2 froze the water and stopped the flow of co2.
Have you thought about feeding the air to water with a solution of alcohol and water in a tub, with dry ice immersed? Should get you close to 0°, while having better thermal absorption than a gas.
I ran a DEI Cry02 on my skyline with side mount inter cooler. I had it going through two in-line 3” pipe “bulbs” first at the throttle body, 2nd after the side mount and the waste spray directly onto the face of the inter cooler. Without touching boost controller, boost climbed 3psi and temp dropped 15-20deg C at top. (Intercooler pipes had condensation like an A/C pipe). Cry02 for the win.
Need an orifice at the entrance to the intercooler to allow the co2 to go from high to low pressure. Also invert the bottle upside down to get pure liquid co2.
The answer's much easier than all of you think:
- The tank in your test laid strait letting only gas out, not the liquid, that's why it didn't work.
- Take a look at the tank, it's lower part frosts after the pressure drop right where the fluid is.
- Just pop the tank upside down, so the liquid part of CO2 is below the gas part and you're good to go.
As a lot of people noticed right, cooling effect is obtained by a phase change of CO2 from liquid state to gas, which will in this case happen right where you need - in the pipeline and in the intercooler. Also make sure the lines are as short as possible.
Can't wait to see the correct test!
Bottle needs to be upside down so liquid is flowing to intercooler. You need a restricting orifice on the inlet side of the cooler. This will cause pressure drop and liquid to boil off....absorbing heat. This is how an evaporator coil works in a refrigeration system. May have to experiment a little to get orifice size right.
pre run the c02 and freeze the cooler then run it with a slower flow . Possibly find a NOS mother bottle stand to hold the co2 bottle upside down.
You are giving away the best data for free, you are the best
You would have to put a huge restrictor on the outlet side. Like a small .050 nitrous jet. And hold the co2 in the core with only a small amount exiting You we’re just blowing it threw and it had no mass to absorb the heat. And to make matters worse it was probably frosting Over the inner core and impeding flow by just blowing a ton threw it all at once. The better test would be to run Freon threw it but you need a pretty stout core to handle that I’ve seen that done with great results
You might try Fluorinert and put dry ice in it. Flourinert + dry ice was used for computer cooling overclocking records. Now they just use straight liquid nitrogen (not recommended in a2w IC). If you try it, have good ventilation or a way to recapture the out gassing cow from the flourinert.
There's too much thermal expansion and the air-to-water intercooler is very similar to a AC unit either on the condenser or the evaporator where you have to have some type of metering valve allowing the fluid to exit in a controlled way
On a side note, would love to see a test on fuel temp. As a lot of the old timer drag racers ive seen run an ice box for the fuel before the carb etc. Also how about an up stream injector or two suppling fuel to the engine but having more time to atomise/evap etc to see a difference in intake temps. While youre at it, how about plain old water injection effect on intake temps and power output. Would love to see definitive proof once and for all. Cheers
the engine masters team did that test I think
Hi guys I’ve tried this also and I restricted the exhaust of the cooler.
Filled a nitrous bottle so I can get liquid co2 to the cooler I spray for 20 sec. the cooler gets DEEP frozen like -20f and since I’m running rear mount turbos the outlet temps are low. I have 122f @6psi in to the cooler and have 19f going out but only testing so far
chevy502dk
Interesting. Thanks
Richard, I am not sure if it has been mentioned, but try running the L2A with dry ice and a medium similar to fuel stabilizer. If agitated enough the mixture can get as low as -176°F.
I wonder if the air has too much velocity to dissipate the heat in that intercooler for a significant improvement. Also curious if the Co2 gas or any gas for that matter just sucks at taking heat away. It is already less dense than a liquid so how is it to absorb that heat energy as well as a liquid.
As someone has already said, liquid seems to be a far better exchange medium. Example: I'm a pool equipment repair tech. Lets say Monday is 85 degrees and the water is 85 degrees. If a cold front comes in overnight and the next morning its 40 degrees. That pool water will feel warm all day because it retains its heat for most of the day. But how long does it take to lower the temp of your house when you come home and its 80 degrees. You turn the AC on and its 70 degrees in 20 minutes. Just my take
You need liquid, water with salt added to get its temp down for flow, then circulate that with either ice or dry ice package so it’s not directly contacting water for thermal transfer, could net seriously lower inlet temps, remember Moroso fuel cool cans, similar theory just larger scale, thermal mass needs to
Be enough to absorb the heat generated. Love the work your putting in👍
The core of the air to water intercooler needs to have a design of an evaporator core, the fin/plate design of an air/water IC won't distribute the CO2 evenly, unlike water or a fluid, a gas requires set directional path across the entire core in order to gain the most heat exchange. However an orifice on the inlet side of the air/water I/C would enable to CO2 to disperse better for that O2/H2O intercooler.
Richard Holdener Increase the discharge hose diameter. Might be restricting flow. Sanity check, put a pressure gauge in the inlet & outlet. Possible the liquid is forming solid dry ice and blocking the core..Could even try nitrous..
If you have any part of the aftercooler surface facing the incoming airflow below zero degrees, it will frost up on that surface, blocking flow.
Your best efficiency if you stay above frost is to cool a liquid coolant for the aftercooler to just barely below freezing, as that will result in a temperature gradient between the coolant side of the aftercooler heat transfer surface and the intake air side of the aftercooler heat transfer surface that ends up with the surface facing the intake air merely being near zero, but not quite at it, so you will get (helpful) condensation, but NO frost to block up your passages.
Then, you need a GREAT deal of flow of coolant going the OPPPOSITE DIRECTION as the intake air, so the freshly-heated intake air faces the warmest coolant, and the already-partially-cooled intake air faces the coldest coolant.
Cooling your intake charge to below zero will work, IF you carefully defrost the coils during the run by cooling the intake air in stages, and that is wildly impractical for most cars, as they would have to have dual coils: one operating while the other defrosts.
The practical lower limit of aftercooling is just above freezing. You can go lower for an experiment, but your one way to do that with relatively cheap technology is to rent a reefer container with lots of thermal inertia in its cargo, such as many small bottles of frozen water that your reefer container can than drop to as far below freezing as you want.
Then, you run the intake air into one end of the container, and have it exit from the other end, so you are almost completely dehumidifying your intake air before it even touches the turbo. THEN you cool THAT dry air down to whatever low temperature you wish.
As you can tell, the logistics of performing such and experiment mean either Alaska or a huge setup to eliminate moisture before it can clog aftercooler passages as frost.
But, for maximum aftercooling, a liquid cooled to just barely below freezing provided in GREAT abundance to a liquid-to-air aftercooler core. is the way to go. Your incoming liquid has to be at about 0.01 degrees above freezing, and it would preferably leave the core at about 1 degree, due to the overwhelming abundance of coolant being thrown through it.
Are you getting liquid Co2 or gaseous Co2 going into the intercooler? Are you getting liquid Co2 out? Ideally you want 100% liquid going in at a rate that 99% of what's exiting is exiting as a gas, though I suspect the outlet of the intercooler is not large enough to allow that rate of phase change.
I also question at what point is the air simply passing through the intercooler to fast for the thermal exchange to occur?
LN2 is often used for max overclocks of computer CPU where excessive temps cause failures and melted silicon.
The transfer method is usually just an open pot of liquid on the heat transfer plate allowing the liquid to evaporate, the same method as using a dry ice intercooler.
Recon main problem with LN2 in an open pot would be keeping liquid over the transfer plate as the vehicle accelerates, and also stopping the fuel from freeze -60'C.
Would be great to see what can be achieved on the Dyno, Have Fun.
First off, I think the A/F intercooler is designed for wet use, ie fluid movement. The issue is, you have no way possible to keep the co2 liquid, I assume the exit is open ended. Now here's what i'd try, Frozen co2 bricks in a water tank with water (or possibly an antifreeze type coolant). You should hit your target temps that way. Dodge uses a Freon intercooler on the Demon, But it's a fully pressurized system so only the liquid freon is used for cooling, no gas is used
Topic for another video but have you thought of doing an SRT Demon style charge cooler with air conditioning? (I think they call it the power chiller) It would be a mess in California so you have my condolences. Like a blower it will cost some power but how much extra is it worth?
Another youtuber “ Turbo John” did a similar thing with Co2, you might get more ideas from his video 👍
Yeah turbo John is a genius he does everything for cheap but I think the bottle should have been sitting straight up and then turn it on I think liquid was going down in there which was causing it not to run correctly. The second thing you need to get a large spray nozzle connected to it like a nitrous line have it go straight into the throttle body
@@blackman8795 you want them to shoot carbon dioxide straight into the throttle body ? thats going to kill power like crazy by displacing oxygen and it may even just cut the motor running all together. Co2 is what comes out your exhaust and it doesnt burn so will kill power or just stop it running all together.
this idea would work with compressed air (high pressure obviously) directed into the throttle body with some sort of nozzle.
@@vans1107 it's a lot more complicated than it sounds, it's been done, there are some good videos about it on here.
ive seen some compressed air supercharging done before..which is completely impractical, but i was referring to a small high pressure line right out of a bottle (4500ish psi) entering the intake piping just before the throttle body..I'm not sure on the exact discharge temp but it is definitely cold enough to almost instantly freeze your skin. Whether or not it would work, i have no idea but it seems like it would be more effective than spraying a compressed gas into an intercooler.
You need cores optimized for expansion cooling like automotive a/c evap cores. Take two of them in a "v" configuration with the turbo side going into the open part of the v and intake side at the bottom.
Also invert the bottle to get consistent flow of liquid co2.
Good idea. Maybe take an A/C coil from a home instead.
Great channel,thanks!
I'm thinking the air volume going through the intercooler is faster then the CO2 can cool thel charge, in other words I believe you need more surface area with CO2 in it for the air to go through (intercooler) before it enters the intake manifold.
Yeah, I'd try a valve on the outlet, to provide a adjustable restriction! If the intercooler could be filled with liquid Co2, it would be much cooler, but would need to off gas to remain cold, maybe the tank can't flow enough Co2? But HEY! Nitrous is cold too! And it is designed to flow liquid!
You need more volume of c02 inside the intercooler to fill up the tanks a restrictor valve on the back side to keep more volume in the intercooler is the trick. I think. Saturating the tanks with c02 will freeze the intercooler.. sending more volume thru without a restrictor the c02 is just touch and go it doesn't get a chance to soak into the metal.. it almost needs to be compressed like a aircondition system
Its the phase change that generates the cooling.. the same way heat is released when gas is compressed, cooling occurs when decompressed.. just make sure the decompression event occurs at the intercooler fins for best results.
Also the air is already cold using dyno water, c02 won't pull the heat as well as water as others have already said, I'd like to see you test fuel temperatures and their effects on power
I wanted to chime in here, back in the 80s I was a Product Engineer on the GM "G" bodies. I personally owned an 87 Grand National. I swapped the 3.8 out for a 4.1, forged pistons, etc.... I modified the stock intercooler by sealing off the front and back, installed a drain cock in the bottom and created an opening in the top. I would pour liquid nitrogen in the top of the intercooler which was good for a 1/4 mile run. The air going into the throttle body was at -15°F. I also used water injection (there was a port on the ECM for that!). Horsepower was at 445, my quarter mile runs were 11.41. I attempted nitrous, however the 200R4 would not hold up. For anyone with back issues of Turbo magazine (late 80s), the car was featured in a Turbo Magazine issue.
very cool-I wrote for Kipp back then
@@richardholdener1727 I remember as an engineering experiment, we created a Turbo Regal El Camino., we used the front end and dash from a 4 door Regal, the power train from the Grand National. Tons of photographers from magazines, then the vehicle was scrapped!
my kind of elco
It would be interesting to run ethanol or acetone through the inter cooler then put some dry ice in the water box and pump the super cold liquid through the ic.
Just make sure wherever the dry ice is is vented or it will go boom.
Its because the co2 flow is too much out the intercooler exit. Reduce the exit port diameter on the intake to about 1/4 of what you have.
Circulate either coolant chilled with dry ice. Or pure alcohol with dry ice. I once did it with coolant. It's not liquid enough . My next step was alcohol. But I'm just not sure or the capability of alcohol to transfer heat. I'm sure you can find a good alternative Richard !
It has to do with the density of your transfer media. As well as the shape of the charge cooler. Carbon dioxide is far less dense than water. Air density is roughly 750 times less dense then water. For a phase transfer type intercooler to work, you would need to expose more of the media to heat by increasing surface area. A better use of a phase transfer would be to utilize the cooling and expansion of a gas in conjunction with water as the transfer media. More like a killer chiller type system that cools the water making it more efficient as a transfer media.
The co2 gas gets cold at the spot where the pressure drop occurs. I am guessing 5 or 6 nitrous jets on the cold water side of the intercooler and running the co2 tank upside down to feed them liquid co2? Kind of like the orifice tube in an auto ac system.
you need to install a jet at the inlet port of intercooler so the gas goes from high pressure to low pressure inside the ic.
Need to keep pressure of the co2 higher in the inter cooler so it will get colder. Or ad air conditioning to the inter coolers maybe some Peltier devices to the intercooler I was thinking about trying that but have to get rid of the heat they make cold on one side hot on the other