new idea?

well i was thinking about turbos and how it might be possible to improve on their basic design. i was throwing around a couple of ideas, one of which seems to be a genuinely good idea.

i came up with the design that you would replace the plastic intake pipe with a metal one that had a turbine built in.
it would be like ones used in turbine enignes, and would be used as an airpump.
it could be either a supercharger or a turbocharger depending on the application and such.
if it was a supercharger, which is how i imagined it, it would need to be geared up quite a bit, or the pully sizes would be rediculous.

its possible that this isnt a "new" idea, and that someone else already invented it, but let me know what you think anyway.

So...whats going to be driving this turbine? You have to have some sort of shaft thats going to be inline and running inside the intake pipe. Sounds way too complicated.

Obviously, it would be an electric motor, powered off your cigarette lighter recepticle.

well i was thinking that it could be run off a belt from the crank if it were a supercharger.
i know that turbos are better, but in this case a supercharger might be simpler.
but ignoring that fact, how does the idea sound?

so instead of the air being sucked in the spun around the inside of the compressor housing, you'd have the air always travel directly forward?

imagine a turbofan inside a jet engine.

now imagine that same turbofan but inside the intake pipe

now imagine that the turbofan is being driven off a belt that is on the crank of an engine

get it?

basically i was looking at a picture of the tornado fuel saving device and realized that if you could drive it so that it forced air into the engine, you would have a very efficient supercharger.

By the end, its easier to do a staged turbo setup or a supercharged engine with a turbocharger.

but why?
it seems to me that a compound setup like that would generate a whole lot of excess heat.

my turbofan idea isnt really compressing the air in a way that would generate more heat

my turbofan idea isnt really compressing the air in a way that would generate more heat

Yes it is.

oh...

well instead of simply saying "it wont work" and being done with it, how about giving an explanation.
i did a bit of research, and it turns out that this isnt a new idea after all (dang it)
the lathem supercharger is pretty similar to my idea so i guess mr. lathem gets the credit/girls/riches...
actually, nobody liked his design, so i guess that says something in its-self.

still, if you have a reason for thinking it wont work, then what is it?
dont just say "it wont work" and not give a reason

If it isn't increasing flow enough to create pressure, then it really isn't doing anything.

my turbofan idea isnt really compressing the air in a way that would generate more heat

Temperature is proportional to pressure. so if you compress the air with a turbo, roots, screw or lathem type compresser, you will always insease the temperature the same amount. (that is excluding the heat-soak of the compressors)

true, but that is with an ideal gas under ideal conditions.
i'm willing to bet that if i asked weather i should use a top of the line turbo or a roots blower i pulled off a junker on my car, 99% of you would say that the turbo is the better choice.
one of the reasons is that certain ways of compressing air are less efficient
some are more efficient

i was thinking that this might be a more efficient way, and create less "extra" heat

how do you know that your setup would be more efficient? have you tried it?also, if you've got this turbine type compressor in your intake, how are you running it? are you going to have a belt going to it and have the intake take a 90 degree bend to allow the shaft to reach it?

I'm guessing that since it has already been tried and nobody has adopted it, it wasn't a good idea. you can try it but i highly doubt you'll get anywhere near the efficiency of a twin screw supercharger, let alone a turbocharger.

BTW that whole thing about ideal gasses has nothing to do with this. the real gas law is pretty much equivalent to the ideal gas law until a few thousand PSI. in fact i've got an example from my university chemistry textbook right here, 1mol of CH4 in a 500mL vessel at 25.0C has a pressure of: 48.9atm assuming ideal behavior, and 44.6atm assuming real behavior. that's a difference of about 8% at over 650PSI. i also did another calculation where it took over 3000PSI to show a significant discrepancy between the two laws.

what i meant to say was that you can calculate the heat rise, but it will always be higher due to the fact that no compressor is 100% efficient.
it is well known that roots blowers usually operate at around 55% efficiency or so.
turbos generally get as high as 85% and can go higher if made right.

the more efficient your compressor, the better job it will do at NOT being an enormous hair dryer.

basically, i was sitting around one day and had an idea.
i asked if anyone liked it and got a resounding NO.
nobody explained why, or bothered to go into detail.
the answer was NO.
even if the idea was dumb, i would still have the sense to try to explain to the person why it wouldnt work and give examples.
granted, you guys do have to put up with a lot of idiots asking how to make their civic have 500 hp and such, but still...

anyway, to answer beef_bourito, my idea was that you would have this turbine mounted inside a metal intake pipe similar to a typical K&N aftermarket intake.
there would be a belt going to a gearbox on the outside of the pipe, which would gear up the turbine to necessary speeds to compress air.
the gearbox would have a belt that would be spun by the engine

it isnt too developed, but that was my idea.



anyway.

so basically you want to remove the rough flow path you get with a turbo or blower?

if that's what you mean, it won't make much difference because the intake runners smooth out the flow and remove much of the "turbulence"

anyway, to answer beef_bourito, my idea was that you would have this turbine mounted inside a metal intake pipe similar to a typical K&N aftermarket intake.
there would be a belt going to a gearbox on the outside of the pipe, which would gear up the turbine to necessary speeds to compress air.
the gearbox would have a belt that would be spun by the engine

it isnt too developed, but that was my idea.



anyway.

The centrifugal flow turbocharger on my car would cost considerably less to make than your axial flow compressor on your car. And since both compressor types only operate well at the higher end of their speed range (see the web link below), and you have unwisely decided to power yours off the engine's crankshaft--my car will blow yours away in acceleration. Because the turbo in my car is powered from the exhaust gasses, and the boost (and RPM that it runs at) is largely independent of engine speed. Thanks to Mr. Wastegate my turbo is producing full boost at 3,200 RPM and continues to 8,000 RPM.
To further damp out your enthusiasm, read this: http://navier.stanford.edu/bradshaw/tunnel/axialfan.html

Axial fans are also terrible at compressing air.
They work best with large flows and very small pressure increases (i.e. a shower fan).

Axial fans are also terrible at compressing air.
They work best with large flows and very small pressure increases (i.e. a shower fan).
That's the long and short of it.

alot goes into the design of a turbo housing. Most of those electric superchargers that push air in are bogus.