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Electric Turbo


santalars

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While drying my hands with that oneand having followed the various threads re Turbo upgrade vs. compressor/blower I was thinking about a one solves all option.

I've done the maths and without heating element it appears that the motor uses about 600-700 watts.

Using a good brushless electrical motor and a gearbox (both from model airplane) (e.g. something like this)it should be possible to build a very effective blower.

Having this working in addition to the turbo, this could add air at any engine speed. Electronic control would be fairly simple as well (or just a switch). And all this would come to an acceptable power consumption. As it's used temporarily only it could suck from the battery and no additional engine power would be used to drive it.

What do you think?

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Most fans or blowers will generate plenty of flow but not very much pressure. So when hooked up to an engines inlet the fan cant actually pressurise it.

Electric turbochargers do exist, but they are basically centrifugal superchargers with a very large electric motor instead of the crank drive.

They also draw a LOT of power.

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I suspect it will deliver nowhere near the volume of air required to run the engine.

Without a turbo your 2.5 litre engine is using 1.25 litres of air per revolution.

At 2000rpm thats 2500 litres per minute.

Add in the turbo at 1.5 bar and it is 3750 lpm.

Its a lot of air to shift!

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It's been discussed to death in years gone by, I seem to remember someone actually marketed it in the 80's, claiming huge powere increases on Minis.

It didn't work, and probably never will.

Remember a Turbocharger is not really a blower, it's a screw compressor, running at speeds in the order of 30,000 rpm.

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you may aswell get nos if you are that way inclined. or even a gas system on a diesel if you want something like that. the fan may well flow the air, however the losses which flow back through the vanes of the motor just are too much. a better turbo, a modified exhaust turbine (make it boost earlier), a different aspect ratio from inlet/outlet on compressor housing, or a supercharger, or a supercharger and turbocharger are the only ways to do this properly and reliably.

or nos.

period!

tourers and race rally cars have bang bang sytems to spin turbos faster than exhaust gasses will(before boost velocity in exhaust occurs), but the exhaust temps are just way too high for diesels without some major modifications.

it is a nice idea, but it just is not going to happen. fuel cells and battery cars will be viable commercially well before something else in combustion engines happens.

richard

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We fiddled with electric superchargers at work a while back. They were properly designed for the purpose with a large electric motor driving a centrifugal blower - like the compressor side of a turbocharger. The problem was that they used kilowatts of electricity when they were running and, given the battery limitations we had, were only suitable for very short bursts.

As it's used temporarily only it could suck from the battery and no additional engine power would be used to drive it.

What do you think? 

That is not quite accurate... engine power has been used to make the electricity that is stored in the battery. The more electricity you use, the more petrol/diesel/lpg you burn.

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If you look at the real one linked above, they use a separate 24 V battery bank for the boost runs, which disconnects from the alternator during the runs. When the charger is turned off, the alternator switches back to charging the boost battery bank....

http://www.civicforums.com/forums/79-forced-induction-swaps/126961-thomas-knight-electric-supercharger-2.html

This system uses 1200 amps, so the average 80-100 amp alternator will recharge the ESC batteries at a 15:1 ratio. That means several 15 second runs (30 seconds) will recharge in 30 X 15, or 450 seconds. That is 7.5 minutes of driving. If you upgraded the alternator to a 200 amp unit, the number could be 6:1. So two runs would recharge in three minutes. Ask the NOX users how they feel about that :-)

The idea is is replaces NOX, but you never run out.

It can never work as a continuous source of power, regardless of design as the power lost from the alternator would exceed the power gains from the blower.

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Newtons laws of thermodynamics is what the problem is here chaps. You can't create or destroy energy, you can however convert from one form to another. The energy required to provide 'boost' and ultimately increased engine power output would be outweighed by hte energy required to create the boost. Largely due to inefficiency in the many components required to make the device in the first place.

Its why your engine heats up when you run it, the inefficiencies are friction (oil reduces)becoming heat energy, the fuel combustion giving off heat, movement and light energy (you only want movement to get your piston moving)

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Newtons laws of thermodynamics is what the problem is here chaps. You can't create or destroy energy, you can however convert from one form to another. The energy required to provide 'boost' and ultimately increased engine power output would be outweighed by hte energy required to create the boost. Largely due to inefficiency in the many components required to make the device in the first place.

Its why your engine heats up when you run it, the inefficiencies are friction (oil reduces)becoming heat energy, the fuel combustion giving off heat, movement and light energy (you only want movement to get your piston moving)

What are you talking about?

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