I have been googling a bit trying to find out anything I canon actively cooling intake air. I mean really conditioning the air before it is pumped in. Along the way I stumbled on to various racing rules which prohibit artificially reducing intake air temp. So now I am curious about air conditioning air intake.

I am sure just abou 80% of us have a CAI system but in all actualality it is not actively cooling the air. Consider the MD ISO Thermal Mod we are told it impedes the thermal conduction process. I am not certain if that is active cooling?

Is active cooling practical?

Are there any benefits from actively cooling the air?

What is the optimal air intake temp?

feel free to shoot this full of holes or contribute what think would build a case for doing this.

Now back to google.

 

Easy to devert AC system to chilling a volume of water and install an air intercooler HOWEVER................the resistance thru the intercooler may [will] offset any gains..........assume you drop 120F air down to 45F that improves density by 75F/11= 6.8%.
The pressure drop across a massive air water intercooler flowing 300CFM might be 1.0 PSI which decreases the density by 13.7/14.7= 6.8%

No net gain!

If you can improve the efficiency of intercooler so it has a lower resistance to the air flowing thru it you MIGHT get a 2-3% positive improvement..........obviously as the outside air temp drops the gain decreases.

In the output of superchargers you are dealing with 175-300F air so intercooling works wonders.

In summer the air above the road gets heated from exhaust of vehicles in front and the road heat rising. Easy to see 120F air going into air intake.

The air flowing into engine [from atmospheric pressure supercharger] is moving so fast thru MAF, TB, plenum, runners that it doesn't have much time to heat up at WOT..........unlike idle and cruise where it flows 10-20 times slower.

Such a chiller might help extreme summer tip in knock.

 

Thanks for the tehnical information. You also confirmed somthing I read regarding the temp of the air not being heated as it is pumped in at high speeds.

Give that air moving in at such a velocity wouldnt be heated then I would assume it i safe to say that it would not be cooled.

What I was thinking is that rather than use cooling lines it might be more beneficial in terms of space and load on the car to use a thermalelectric device, Peltier Heat Pump, to cool the aluminu ring inside the CAI.

At highway speed it would be very easy to cool the heated side of the TED and at idle either use fans that switch on from wheel speed sensor input or engine RPM.

They already use TED in climate controlled seats and various other applications. Also, TEDs create no mechanical load.

IIRC if you stack the Peltier devices in parallel to each other you can really reach some low temps but I am concerned about condensation. How much water would it take to induce a hydrolock.