fortysixandtwo

Simple answer: No.

Disclaimer- I'm not about to dust of my thermo books for this, so I'm using very generalized figures to get my point across.

A little exapanded:
You'll have energy loss from the AC system and between the air cooled by the evaporator and the air inside the intercooler.

You can probably fit a 24,000 btu/hr coil in front of a front mount IC. Assuming about a 80% efficiency on the AC system, that's about 11hp right off the top of any potential gain.
Let's say it can drop the outside temp from 80°F to 60°F (I feel I'm being veeery generous at what the air velocity probably is) so that's 20°F.
Now lets assume a 80% efficency on the intercooler. That equates to a temperature drop of 16°F
I believe the rule of thumb is 1% hp gain for every 10F drop in inlet temperature, so that makes a hp increase of 1.6%.

So.... on, let's say a 400hp engine, we spent 11hp cooling pre intercooler air. That grosses us 406.4 hp due to a cooler intake charge. Which leaves us a net hp of 395.4 .

Due to the complexity of the AC system that would fit in the package available and it's wide range of inlet air temperature on both the evap and condensate coils, it would be easier to just improve the flow through the IC or spray in with something.
Spray would be the best route. The energy stored in the bottle was put there by something not in your car. Opposed to using the gasoline burnt in the engine.

azmi951

Mercedes uses AC to cool some of their V12 TT motors. I would imagne there are some very specific design changes required to achieve this but it might work well as a thermal capacitor and not as a continous operating system.

951_for_John

I didn't say I was going to build it, I thought it was an interesting Idea.

What I envisioned was a custom built intercooler, with the intake charge flowing over a coil cooled
by an A/C type system. The pump would have to cycle just as in a standard A/C system, it could be operating at part throttle, and switched off at WOT.

The big question is indeed will the pump soak up more HP than the gain of cooling the intake charge.

944obscene

Capital YES on that one. Water/meth is amazing. Use it with standard intercooling and you will notice nice gains. Not to mention, it allows you to play with timing if you want, and explore power that would otherwise not be available. Water slows the burn which extends the duration of torque on the piston during the combustion cycle and it acts as a knock inhibitor.

89951DREAMER

This idea has been done on a Dodge truck with a V10. I remember years ago there was a magazine article about a Dodge V10 1-ton truck that had been twin-turbo'd and used a air-to-liquid intercooler system. The liquid was cooled in an ice chest that was in/under the back seat. The ice chest was kept cool by an a/c evaporator that was operated by the factory a/c compressor. This was basically like one of the dual-zone a/c systems that are used in minivans and suv's. There is an evaporator for the front and the rear run by one compressor. The results were that the ambient air temp was something like 120+ F due to the fact that the vehicle was in the Middle East desert. The air intake temp measured after the intercoolers at the throttle body was something like 68 F. The engine was making 900+hp, so I doubt the drag on the a/c compressor was noticable. It was a very elaborate/complex system and I don't know if it would be worth the effort on a 951.

Ian

gt37vgt

well using a propane set up is awsome you get the the gas pre compressed from the the gas station so you don't have to use the energy compressing the gas also the avaperation of gas is always proportianal to air flow .
but this was extra cooling in a convential air water set up with front mounted heat exchanger .
but fact is an AC system alone can't continuously move enough heat

944obscene

It would only be good for bursts of acceleration. Nothing longer than a minute. Doesn't seem worth it to try to use it on a track session. Water/alky injection on the other hand would be great for cooling the intake charge. On prolonged runs, an A2A intercooler can heat soak. Probably not that much of an issue with the location of the 944 intercooler, but it is still nice to further cool the air with a liquid that you can spray in it. Plus the effects last through the combustion process. I've seen people activate their systems with a window switch or foot-throttle switch under hard acceleration. This would be worth looking into.

kiyoskia

Three words: THERMAL HARD PIPE

http://www.lindseyracing.com/mm5/mer...egory_Code=HOW
Por ejemplo:

88BlueTSiQuest

That's a cool idea, but...... Considering that the coolant is probably around 190º, I couldn't see it being very useful after the intercooler. Maybe before the IC to knock some temperature off of the charge air, but how much would be the next question. Considering how quickly the pressurized air is flowing, do you think that those pipes would do much of anything at all?

Air to water intercoolers channel the flow through them in a zig zag fashion, to extract as much heat out of the air as possible. But those pipes just have the air flowing straight through them.

I'm still fond of the idea I posted on the first page, using an Air to Water IC with it's own water source. This way you aren't using the already hot engine coolant.





** Edit **

I should of read more on their site, it appears that they do want you to use an external cooler and pump. Pretty costly though, for unproven technology.

Chris Prack

Three words: Waste of Time.

89951DREAMER

exactly