How large of a reservoir is needed for an A2W intercooler? I know more water is better, but how do I find/calculate the optimal balance between cooling and weight?
Also, how much flow is required from the pump?
How large of a reservoir is needed for an A2W intercooler? I know more water is better, but how do I find/calculate the optimal balance between cooling and weight?
Also, how much flow is required from the pump?
Your reservoir shouldn't be doing the work, your heat exchanger should. Calculate how much heat you expect/want to transfer from the air to the water in your intake plumbing. Your cooler (heat exchanger at the front) should transfer that same amount of heat. The reservoir is not intended to cool, the only cooling effects it will have is the added thermal mass of the water, which is a band-aid for an undersized cooler. The heat transfer requirements will vary depending on temps, flow rates, etc. so you need to know that stuff before you start running calcs. Desired intake air temp drop desired across the intercooler, air flow rate through the intake plumbing, ambient air temps, expected air flow across the cooler, pump flow rate, cooler size, cooler performance, etc. You could run a whole hell of a lot of calcs doing this in a fancy spreadsheet if you wanted to do things by the book.
The easier way to do it is to find somebody who's got a system that performs similar to what your target is and mimic it. If you're not satisfied with it, change stuff up. Some find this more fun than crunching numbers for hours/days.
Bryce
What are you trying to do?
On our Challenge car, we had a 1 gal reservior, but that was entirely due to us using ice water for a 1/4 trip. If we packed the thing totally full with ice, there would be just a little left after one run.
On the Bonneville racer I work on, it's a full sized cooler full of ice water, and for a 5 mile LSR run, we almost melt all of it, too.
If you are talking long drives, I would think that the resevior can be a problem if you don't cool the water well, since it will be just as good a storage of heat as it isn't one. So over a long time, you can end up with hot water "cooling" the intake charge.
And that's not really even considering the weight penalty.
Eric
I'm turbo-ing my X1/9. I don't have much room for an A2A intercooler, so I thought A2W would be the way to go. The car is my daily driver and will see autocross duty.
I plan on having adequet cooler for the external heat exchanger.
Might want to look into maybe getting an ST165, ST185RC, or ST205 Celica A2A setup.
I've seen AW11 mr2 guys use it, so it may be an alternative for you.
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