"Intercooler Tubes"

[ee904age]

This may have been posted before, but does anyone have any experience with these?

Any Pros/Cons?

Seem like a great idea in theory for the likes of MR2's bt possibly a big airflow restriction?

[cogent]

it's just a compact water to air IC, isnt it?

[sergei]

Sounds like scam to me.

Not enough of volume water flows to take all the heat away.
Simple physics as a matter of fact. Even discarding the low efficiency of fins, and added drag. There is not even enough surface for heat transfer to water jacket. Unless you are spraying it with liquid nitrogen I don't see how it would work at all.

[Akane]

Looks like it works, and you can have a lot of them to replace your normal pipes, might work friggin awesome on something with very little room, like the MR2

[matt dunn]

we have a large one for the MRS we are building.

I believe they will work, and data logging and inlet temp sensors will prove it either way.
Water cools a lot better than air,

[Stott69]

Could hook it up via the air con with a temp sensor, when you see the gauge rise hit air con and blast it on full chill. shame the air con will drain all the power your gaining tho

[Boosted_162]

we have a large one for the MRS we are building.

I believe they will work, and data logging and inlet temp sensors will prove it either way.
Water cools a lot better than air,

Very keen to hear your results when its running

[wishihadaTE27]

water has a heat capacity something like 4 times better than air - so its definitely possible.

[mr_monkey]

the tubes are very very very expensive compared to other water 2 air intercoolers on the market.

[sergei]

Has any one considered amount of energy needed to dissipate vs surface area and water volume?

There is a reason why intercoolers are bulky, even W/A ones that are generally smaller still, have huge surface area where water indirectly contacts the air flow.

That ring, even if you put 10 of them, hasn't got enough surface area to allow efficient heat transfer. The fins do not have capacity to conduct heat either. They are long and thin.

I can bring calculations into this... but I am too lazy.

Here is the basic break down:
Water heat capacity is ~4.2 kj/ kg K
In other words it means that 4.2kJ needed to raise temperature of 1kg (1L) of water by 1K (1'C).

Now lets assume following things: guestimate % of heat lost through turbo is ~10% of the power. So if 200kW engine 20kW is heat created by turbo.
20kW is 20kJ per second.
I assume the following: temperature drop is 30'C (before intercooler is 80'C, after is 50'C).

so we have the following numbers:

4.2 kJ / kg K
30K
20kJ / s

We can calculate water flow needed to soak that heat.
20kW / (30K * 4.2 kJ / kg K) = 0.159 kg / s (or ~9L/min).

That is all good and dandy, until you start calculating the capacity of certain area to conduct heat. What people expect is all of those 20kW go through that small area (~10sq cm). The smaller the surface the greater thermal resistance. Thermal resistance of that desing is huge.



Thermal conductivity of aluminium is: 237 W/ mK
The thickness of that unit (eyeballing) is ~ 5mm. The area ~ 10sq cm
So:

237 W/ mK * 30K * 0.001sq m / 0.005m =1420 Watts.

This unit with those parameters (temp difference is 30K and dimensions eyeballed from picture, you are welcome to supply real dimensions), the unit can only dissipate 1.42 kWatts!. That number is irrelevant as the fins are not able to conduct that heat to the rings anyway (same reason - low thermal conductivity).


To improve my calculations one can measure real dimensions (I need surface area of the area covered by ring and thickness of the tube wall).

[20v_rollaboy]

My jetski comes with a tube type intercooler which is actually built into the intake manifold.



One of the best mods to do to these is swap it out for an external w2a intercooler because of the surface area.

[cat007]

My jetski comes with a tube type intercooler

wait wait wait wait wait waaaaaaaaait a minute

You own a turbo jetski? Is that normal?

[Bling]

Some come super charged factory, and they go quite well if I do say so So his is either supercharged, or he's slapped a turbo on it What mods have you done to get 74mph out of it? What they do normally, 65?

[20v_rollaboy]

Yes super-charged

Out of the box around 65 yes. Quite a bit done to mine, might start up a project thread if people are interested

[Bling]

Do it!

[loudstealthGT-Four]

Do it!

+1

[cat007]

Do it!

+1

++1

[sergei]

My jetski comes with a tube type intercooler which is actually built into the intake manifold.



One of the best mods to do to these is swap it out for an external w2a intercooler because of the surface area.

This is very different to the tubes in question.
The water core is inside, and has much greater surface area and volume. Also if you look at the fittings, it supports much higher water flow.

[Adamal]

Yes super-charged

Twin charge it!