Fix_Until_Broke
Top Post Dawg
Has anyone thought of putting a bypass valve on the intercooler?
Here's my thoughts - For most driving there is way more air than required for the ammount of fuel injected and since the compression ratio is fixed, the more air in the cylinder, the more work it takes to get the piston to TDC. Ideally there would be only slightly more air than required for complete combustion of the fuel injected. So, with the intercooler, we heat the air with the turbo (increasing pressure/temperature), then we cool that air with the intercooler, then we bring that same air into the cylinder just to compress it to heat it up to combust the fuel we inject. So for crusing conditions why heat up the air just to cool it, just to re-heat it again? In a maximum effort (or even moderate effort) we want as much air in the cylinder as we can get and the intercooler makes sense. But for crusing conditions bringing in only as much air as needed for complete combustion and having that air at even pre-heated by the exhaust would minimize the ammount of work that the engine does that never makes it to the wheels.
So...if one could bypass the intercooler during cruise conditions and not bypass it during high load conditions, maybe one could increase the thermodynamic efficiency of the operation.
Maybe it's not worth the hassle as the air from the turbo during cruise conditions may not that hot, but given the above (assuming it's valid) there is no reason to cool it either.
Any thoughts - just throwing this out there
Here's my thoughts - For most driving there is way more air than required for the ammount of fuel injected and since the compression ratio is fixed, the more air in the cylinder, the more work it takes to get the piston to TDC. Ideally there would be only slightly more air than required for complete combustion of the fuel injected. So, with the intercooler, we heat the air with the turbo (increasing pressure/temperature), then we cool that air with the intercooler, then we bring that same air into the cylinder just to compress it to heat it up to combust the fuel we inject. So for crusing conditions why heat up the air just to cool it, just to re-heat it again? In a maximum effort (or even moderate effort) we want as much air in the cylinder as we can get and the intercooler makes sense. But for crusing conditions bringing in only as much air as needed for complete combustion and having that air at even pre-heated by the exhaust would minimize the ammount of work that the engine does that never makes it to the wheels.
So...if one could bypass the intercooler during cruise conditions and not bypass it during high load conditions, maybe one could increase the thermodynamic efficiency of the operation.
Maybe it's not worth the hassle as the air from the turbo during cruise conditions may not that hot, but given the above (assuming it's valid) there is no reason to cool it either.
Any thoughts - just throwing this out there