Originally posted by beyondloadedSE:
Are water/air intercoolers more efficient than air/air intercoolers? I know Warmonger has seen an 80% effeciency rate with his intercooler (without ice iirc) and i think i read somewhere that water/air intercoolers can have over a 100% effeciency. Can air/air IC's do just as well?



Yes and no. How's that for a good answer?

Water has somewhere between ten and fifteen times the heat transfer rate compared to air, so on the intake charge side, a proper a/w core can be significant;y smaller than a proper a/a core to remove the same amount of heat from the intake charge, given an equal temp of the cooling mediums.

The problem (and some benefit) w/ water to air comes in with keeping the temperature of the water down. With a/a you constantly have fresh ambient air flowing through the core always at the ambient air temp. The a/w core is constantly circulating the same water, which heats up when it passes through the core. To keep the water as close to ambient as possible, you have to install a heat exchanger (a radiator) somewhere in the free airflow to get the heat out of the water. This increases the complexity of the a/w vs. an air to air by a significant margin. Now, a big benefit of the w/a in certain applications, is the fact that for short periods of time, you can decrease the temperature of the water significantly below ambient (with ice, or other extremely cold stuff ) allowing efficiencies to exceed 100% for those short periods.

The only way to emulate the "ice water trick" w/ an air to air setup is with some sort of sprayer that sprays cold water, CO2, N2, or something like that, onto the intercooler when needed. I've never seen efficiency numbers from these sort of setups, and it would vary extremely from setup to setup, especially due to the base core's potential efficiency.

Balance is the Key. rarasvt@comcast.net