Quote from: arb on April 15, 2011, 12:27:42 pmas water can't cool charge air below 180F, air is more efficient on the highway, but it takes up more space under the hood and is not as efficient at low speeds w/o a fan...Awesome piece of engineering work !!! I didn't know there was much automotive research in N.H. :-D I guess being at the big 3 for so long I missed it.Actually if you look at his temp charts you can see he is definitely cooling below 180F! Looks like his peak post-IC temp was about 32C / 90F.The place I've most frequently seen that 180F number quoted is when people are talking about using engine coolant for their AWIC setup which is definitely NOT what is happening here...
as water can't cool charge air below 180F, air is more efficient on the highway, but it takes up more space under the hood and is not as efficient at low speeds w/o a fan...Awesome piece of engineering work !!! I didn't know there was much automotive research in N.H. :-D I guess being at the big 3 for so long I missed it.
Some industrial / heavy duty applications use engine coolant for their AWIC, but in those cases we're talking about engines designed to be at full power for hours at a time. Things like mining equipment, gensets, etc. An engine coolant cooled AWIC on a motor boosting 30+ PSI can still delivers a respectable decrease in intake temperatures, especially when off-bost isn't a consideration.Obviously though what we are doing is quite a bit different. We tend to drive at significantly less than full power for the most part, we spend a lot of time at part throttle and we usually only see maximum boost for a few minutes at a time tops. It'd be nuts to be heating our inlet air up to engine coolant temperature the majority of the time.Anyhow, now that we've got that sorted, was still hoping the OP would chime in with an update after a year of running his AWIC!