Hey guys
New VW owner here (well, in about a week, that is).
With some experience in the HVAC world, I can tell you that there are solutions out there for this "thing". It's actually a pretty common concern among cold air system designers. The last thing you want to do is freeze-up the coil in a medium to large AC system so, the dynamics are very well understood and can easily be extrapolated here IMHO.
The very first thing to do is to sample the intake. You need accurate humidity, temp and air flow monitoring. 'Sounds complicated but the electronic sensors today are rugged and reliable enough for an automotive application. Then you need an electronic card to work out the enthalpy of the system. Basically, you want this little electronic brain to tell you when you are approaching The Danger Zone.
Then you have several options at your disposal to fend-off the threat; you can instruct a butterfly (flap) valve to modulate or even shut-off the exterior air inflow. You can install a reversing valve on the intercooling heatpump to transform the intercooler into an interwarmer to de-ice the sytem. Or, even simpler, to stop the compressor and gas exchange so the coil is no longer cold enough to de-humidify the air (read: produce condensation).
You can also start a micro-pump to drain the condensate and prevent accumulation. This pump should be able to handle thick petroleum residue too. If you don't want to go through all this, you can simply open up a contact and kill the turbo untill the conditions are safe.
From what I have read in this thread, I believe that there are only very specific temperature swings combined with high humidity atmospheres that could result in a potentially harmful incident. But then the resulting damage can be very extensive.
So it becomes a formula like the one from Fight Club: "If (A+B) X n where n is the number of incidents = C and C is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."
New VW owner here (well, in about a week, that is).
With some experience in the HVAC world, I can tell you that there are solutions out there for this "thing". It's actually a pretty common concern among cold air system designers. The last thing you want to do is freeze-up the coil in a medium to large AC system so, the dynamics are very well understood and can easily be extrapolated here IMHO.
The very first thing to do is to sample the intake. You need accurate humidity, temp and air flow monitoring. 'Sounds complicated but the electronic sensors today are rugged and reliable enough for an automotive application. Then you need an electronic card to work out the enthalpy of the system. Basically, you want this little electronic brain to tell you when you are approaching The Danger Zone.
Then you have several options at your disposal to fend-off the threat; you can instruct a butterfly (flap) valve to modulate or even shut-off the exterior air inflow. You can install a reversing valve on the intercooling heatpump to transform the intercooler into an interwarmer to de-ice the sytem. Or, even simpler, to stop the compressor and gas exchange so the coil is no longer cold enough to de-humidify the air (read: produce condensation).
You can also start a micro-pump to drain the condensate and prevent accumulation. This pump should be able to handle thick petroleum residue too. If you don't want to go through all this, you can simply open up a contact and kill the turbo untill the conditions are safe.
From what I have read in this thread, I believe that there are only very specific temperature swings combined with high humidity atmospheres that could result in a potentially harmful incident. But then the resulting damage can be very extensive.
So it becomes a formula like the one from Fight Club: "If (A+B) X n where n is the number of incidents = C and C is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."
