12 volt peltiers have been used to cool overclocked processors for ages. Any reason why I couldn't pelt my intercooler? Discuss..

 

No reason why you can't do that.

It would be just the same as something like a cryo-spray cooler.

You would need to add an extra 12 Volt battery to power the coolers, and then recharge the battery either when the coolers are off, or at home from a charger.

I think it would be way way clower than a cryo cooler though, so it might not give you much benefit.

Maybe if you could describe the situation in which you want to see a benefit from this, we could help you with some more analysis. (Make yourself comfortable, relax, and we'll start when you were a child of 8...)

If you want to cool the intercooler to get better fuel economy, I don't think it will help (But I'm not sure) I think the drag on the engine running the coolers will take more energy thant he cooler air will give you, but it would need to be tried I think.

 

Realize that the current draw for your average 50 watt peltier is somewhere on the order of 10 amps... and it is normally about 40mm square. Plus you need a really good heatsink, as the temperature delta it totally dependent on how well you cool the hot side of the TEC. Its hard to make a peltier cooler for a single soda, much less a rushing airstream. You would need many multiples of them, several hundred pounds of batteries, heavier alternators, and heatsinks.

Its a neat idea, but the application isn't pretty.

I used to sell peltier cooled heatsink kits for personal computer CPUs. but stopped carrying them as the heat load ratings of the newer processors went up once they got beyond about 1ghz.

 

<==writing this reply on watercooled Athlon XP PC.

 

What is the BTu rating of one of those Peltiers and how much power does it use? I can give you some rough temperature and flow numbers:

My 19% pulleyed MCS is flowing roughly 160 g/s of air at 6,000 RPM, full throttle under load in 4th gear.

Ambient temp = 275 K
Intercooler inlet temp = 364 K
Intercooler outlet temp = 304 K

It should be pretty easy to see if a Peltier could deliver a measurable difference in such an application.

 

Funny, thought about this several times myself as I have a few Peltier modules lying around from the days when overclocking was worth the effort.

As the Peltier process is so inefficient I never believed it would work. You could, however, easily rig up a few peltiers to chill a water cooled intercooler. Still probably wouldn't work as well as a bag of ice.

 

I'm going to reroute my AC Coils to the top of my Intercooler.....

 

Unlike phase-change systems (refrigeration, heat pumps, air conditioning), a peltier required more energy than it transfers, i.e. it would take more energy put into the system than is moved or transferred by it. You would need a far, far larger intercooler just to dissipate the heat put into the system and not yet aken into account the btu load of the actual charge air reduction.

Much like the current state of the art in PC processor cooling, some of the best results are being seen with water intercooling. This gives you a means to put in a larger heat dissipating radiator in a more convenient location (in front of the radiator, etc) while the thermal mass of the water in the system itself helps to absorb the spikes of heat load during bursts of acceleration. In other words, the water contained in the intercooling system itself can absorb quite a bit of heat energy without raising the water temperature by a large amount when compared to an air-to-air intercooling setup.

As for a below-ambient intercooling setup for car engines, most have relied on one-time phase change systems using dry ice, CO2 sprayers, and ice. A water intercooler lends itself well to using a 'cool can' filled with ice water as a chiller. Using a continuous phase change system (think using the car's air conditioneer as a charge cooler) sap energy from the engine and produce minimal returns for the power they draw and weight they introduce.

 

'twas just a thought...

 

Yeah, I was considering this too, but for installation in a CAI. We use TECs all the time at work (calibration of IR cameras), and yes, they do produce a LOT of heat. However, if you were able to dissipate the heat off the hot side, you could get pretty far below zero on the cold side. Intercooler size might be impractical, and CAI location would be fail difficult to cool the 'hot' side. Interesting concept though.

Steve