Refrigerator like Intercooler?

[guigs219]

Ok 1 month ago I was learning about Turbochargers and Intercoolers in my Autos class, and my teacher said that the coolest the air going into the engine the better it is.
And the he explained how a Turbo and a Intercooler works.

Then I was thinking
What if you build something around the Intercooler like a Refrigerator or something like that.
It would keep it really cool wouldn't it?
Do you think it would be possible?

As I was saying I learned about Turbos and Intercoolers 1 month ago, and I'm not any expert
I was just wondering if that would be a good Idea

[MagicRat]

Refrigerating the incoming air would consume more power than the extra power produced by the engine, so that would not be practical.

However, drag racers and top- speed racers regularly use ice to chill intake manifolds and/or incoming air. Inevitably, their runs last from a few seconds to a few minutes, so ice will provide a benefit before it melts (without the drag of an AC compressor.

[shorod]

Another trick would be to spray nitrous onto the intercooler to chill the fins of the intercooler and hence the air flowing through the intercooler. Some production Subarus used a water jet sprayed onto the intercooler to have a similar, but less drastic effect.

One may ask, why not just spray the nitrous into the intake rather than wasting it by spraying onto the intercooler. The quick answer would be because it's less hard on the engine.

-Rod

[curtis73]

Anything that requires engine-driven power to cool something will have negative results. If you used (for instance) A/C compressors to cool the intercooler, the additional 10 hp you would get from the cooler air would be more than offset by the additional 20 hp it would cost to run all the compressors to get it.

No free lunch.

But, if you use the stored energy in a compressed air tank, you can offset that energy use. Using an energy source like a compressor to fill a liquid nitrogen tank can give you an energy sponge in the car that doesn't require energy FROM the car to power it.

Energy is energy. If you ask a car to provide energy to make energy, its ALWAYS a losing battle. If you use an outside source to store energy and then put it in the car, you can make it faster.