If you were to keep the factory sprayer and place a chiller kit on the intercooler could you freeze the water that is sprayed? Would this cause damage or even have that much of an effect on the performance of the IC?

 

what do you mean with chiller kit? like nitrous oxide cooling?

If you can accumulate ice on the IC, it would definitely be more effective at cooling than simple airflow through it. Remember that it takes a lot more energy (heat) to change the phase of water, than simply to cool it.. you're already sucking a lot of heat by evaporating the water, but if you had to melt it too, it would take even more heat from the air going to manifold... problem is, how would you freeze water on the IC, something that would be relatively hot in the 1st place.
In theory, yes it would increase the effectiveness OF THE IC, but it probably wouldnt increase power dramatically... most people cant register a power diff b/w spraying the IC, so i doubt they would feel the difference in freezing it. maybe if you start running higher boost and the air starts getting hotter it would be more effective.

as for damage, its never really good to have one side of metal be extremely hot and the other side extremely cold. it's also not good to repeatedly heat and cool it in cycles. eventually, you stress and fatigue the metal enough that you could start getting leaks around the weld joints that dont expand in the same rate.

im curious on how you plan on freezing an IC though... or why.

 

well i was thinking of mounting a nitrous oxide cooling kit and i was thinking if the factory sprayer was used in unison it might freeze the water.

It was just a thought because I have no idea at what temp the gases come out at. Would be interesting though it if were possible.

 

Use CO2. It's cheaper than nitrous. Like Thwack said though, you wont really notice a difference spraying the IC.

 

i do like the idea... but the fact of freezing the IC does worry me slightly.... figuring that water expands when it is frozen if you were to get a fine mist that was to condense in the IC, and then freeze it it could possibly become a problem with cracking it... Kinda like putting a soda can in the freezer... this is all in theory though.. If it could be proven to be safe i would be all for it for sure Another thing i wonder is has anyone ever thought of making an intercooler system that circulates super cooled liquid or coolant that wont freeze almost like a radiator...? Last i had heard ford was working on somthing for the Lightning that used the AC to build up a super cooled intake charge that last for about 30 sec's and offers a 50hp gain... Also just an idea i guess........

 

If you could get the water to freeze AND stick to the IC, wouldn't a layer of warmed water be trapped between the IC and the ice layer?? This would block any airflow and you may end up with warmer water next to you IC?????

Just thinking out loud.

 

no, it would be better b/c water conducts heat better than air, so if you have ice and hot metal separated by a layer of water, the metal will cool faster than just blowing room temp air on it. Remember moving air over something is nowhere near as effecient and sitting water or ice on it. Difference is that air is free and doesnt need recharging.

as for using a nitrous cooling kit in conjuntion with the sprayer, theres a couple of things wrong w/ this:

1. you shouldn't use water with the IC sprayer, you should use windshield washer fluid because it wont freeze in winter and screw up any of the tanks or plumbing, and it has a lower point of evaporation than water since it has some alcohol in it. take one finger and dip it into water, and dip another finger into rubbing alcohol, then pull them both out and blow on them... the alcohol finger will be colder b/c the alcohol evaporates faster, and as i mentioned in my last post, evaporation is one of the best ways to suck heat from something. The lower the evaporation point, the faster it will cool something and the cooler it will get in long run. By using washer fluid, you cool the IC more effeciently, but it wont freeze easily.

2. You dont want to freeze any kind of fluid using the NO2 cooling kit, heres why: Imagine that you can cool 5 Als per second of nitrous spray on the intercooler (als is a made up unit, for argument's sake, but think of it like a btu or a calorie, a unit measuring heat). now, the turbo transfers 20 als of heat to the intake air per second. Think of the normal IC (with no spray or cooling kit) as cooling like 5 als per second, so the intake air has 15 als of heat in it when it reaches the manifold. the sprayer with washer fluid adds another 2 als of cooling per second to the IC, so using the spray, you'd have air with 13 als of heat hitting the manifold. If you use the nitrous kit with the IC you'll be adding 5 als of coolign to the normal IC, so you'd have a sum of 10 als of cooling, and the air hitting the manifold would have 10 als of heat.

still with me? to summarize, the ic works good, works a bit better with the spray, and a bit better than that with the nitrous.

now, if you spray water and nitrous at the same time at the intercooler, some of the cooling the nitrous will provide will go to cooling the sprayed water as oppoesed to the IC itself. if the water changes to ice, it will take A LOT of the cooling power of the nitrous, leaving little for the IC itself. so of the 5 als of cooling the nitrous provides, 4 of them are now being taken to cool and freeze this water you're spraying. but now this frozen water is now pelting your ic, some if it sticking, some of it bouncing off, some of it damaging the fins. this frozen water is now adding maybe 2-3 als of cooling to the IC... might be as good if not slightly better than a sprayer filled with washer fluid, but definitely worse than spraying with co2 or nitrous.

if you dozed off during that manifesto, just remember, freezing water sprayed at intercooler with a nitrous kit would be bad, just use the kit alone, or alongside washer fluid. dont be trying to freeze the water.

that was my heat transfer lesson for the day, hope you all enjoyed it.

 

all of these good points, and lets not forget diminishing returns , once you have the IC cold enough it will not cont to produce benifits beyond those limits. i think everyone agrees if you IC is hot from back to back runs, then the faster and better you can cool the IC the better your gains or return to your good cold baseline runs, now let look at this senario. its 20 degrees out side and you are playing in the mountains, how long at 60 -70 mph do you think it will take to cool the IC down from just a few blast on the turbo not long, but if its 100 degrees like TX and you just ran you fav. road; back to back runs will exhaust you IC abilities and loose performace, so in this senario CO2 or NO2 will give you back your cool start runs , the laws of thermal dynamics cannot be bent, at a certain temp and humidity and altitude your engine will make max HP. your theory has merit but only if your are starting at the upper end of the equation. just think of the added wt just to set up NO2 or CO2 if you gains are infrequent, It maybe helpful for a day at the track with back to back runs but daily driving its not going to help much. better off with good mods like exhuast , bigger IC,Flash for ECU and boost controller so you will get all 19.5 of you boost. also would just be easier to shoot 35 shot of NO2 in the intake for better cooling and added 02.

always like these thread to see if you can eek out any performance.

 

Don’t know of you would see any benefits but you wont loose anything either. Go for it mate and tell us if you notice any differences. Buy the way, if you can heat wrap the turbo and manifold then you will see underbonnet temps drop quite a bit (less heat sink into the inlet manifold/tubing). I would also try a larger cooler before the chiller kit as you will see gains from that. You could silver heat wrap the boost pipes as well to try and reduce heat sink but only where they may be heated (near block and exhaust) and not if they are likely to be in the flow of cold air. A good example of this is boost solutions car.