Thermoelectric Coolers?

[Anonymous]

Hey,
This is just an idea I wanted to throw our there. Next year Ill be doing Undergraduate research on thermoelectric coolers. If anyone doesn't know what they are, basically they are 2 different types of metal making contact with each other, and when a current is applied, one metal gets hot and one metal gets cold. Like a thermocouple but working backwards, called Peltier Effect.

Getting back to my question, would it be worth considering trying to use a thermoelectric cooler in place of an inter-cooler in a turbo system. The cooler will drop the temp 40*C lower than the ambient air. And acording to some quick thermo math, a turbo making 14 psi at on a 70*F day, the turbo air is 252*F.

Seems to me if you were pressed for space maybe you could run a thermo electric cooler somewhere in the turbo line, with good ventilation to the ambient air and good heat transfer to the cooler, would this be worthwhile?

Some Questions:
How much would an air to air intercooler drop the temp on generic car?
Can anyone tell me for sure what the temp is coming out of a turbo?
What is the relationship between power output and air temp going into the engine?

Thanks
Paul

 

[Anonymous]

How cold would the metal get. If it got colder than the outside air rushing through the intercooler, then you could run it as an in-front intercooler, but if it didnt have enough heat transfer to cool it to make a difference as an in-front cooler, you cold use it as a secondary cooler to cool already cooled air. (theres alotta "cool's" in there)

I like this idea, thermodynamics are fun.

Of course a secondary interecooler opens up means of resriction for airflow if not made correctly too.

 

[Anonymous]

Some one has tried this, but it has been a year or two since I heard anything about it.

Seems to me .... to be effective, it was way too large, too heavy, and drew 200 amps.

 

[Anonymous]

Thats what I was thinking. But how much of a temp difference would I need to make to see a performance difference?

 

[addo]

Peltier effect can create icy cold, but the amount of diodes (if that's what they are) needed to intercool or chill a water/air intercooler would draw a fair current and there is significant heat ejected on the other side.

Regards, Adam.

 

[cfmustang]

I was about to say the same thing. The Peltier effect can generate some impressive cold, but it becomes significantly less efficient as the cooling requirement goes up.

It has been discussed as a solution to all sorts of things, including pollution free automotive air-conditioning, but it was discovered that the amount of energy required to run it makes it impractical.

Me, I am thinking small. I am building a bar in my basement and have been considering making the bar top metal and using Peltier chips to refrigerate the bar top to keep the beer mugs cold.

There is a microbrewery downtown from me that has a conventionally refrigerated bar top and it is probably one of the coolest ideas (pardon the pun) I have seen in a while.