Compressed Air Question

T

TheBryGuy

Member
:
'02 Protege5
Laying in bed last night, I started thinking. It's common knowledge that when compressed air is uncompressed it gets cold. Would it be benificial at all to put a scuba tank in the car and run a hose to the intake and use compressed air like NOS? I know NOS on our cars is just asking for trouble but would compressed air make enough of a temp. drop to give me a little boost? I'm being realistic. I'm not expecting 5-100 hp. Maybe just a little more umph on the straights when I'm autocrossing.

Second question. If you were to do that, where would you run the hose to? Would it need to be before the MAF sensor so your engine could calculate the added air? Maybe into the intake manifold like NOS?

I dunno, it might be a dumb question but it was a thought I had.
 
I can only comment on the first part of it. My thoughts would be that the gains would be negligible at best. NO2 works primarily because it's a saturated O2 solution (the N being there just to make sure the oxygen doesn't just spontaneously combust, keep it stable for storage, and any other similar reaction with the environment, along with NO2 easier to manufacture NO2 vs. just pure O2).

I'd imagine that compressed air "uncompressing" would warm back up pretty quickly upon contact with a surface or ambient air mass in the intake, regardless of delivery methods.

Just my thoughts...
 
Give it a whirl.
and put it before the MAF, but make sure it's not in a position to damage teh MAF.
 
Interesting idea. I'd like to see how it'd turn out. But like kooldino said, make sure its before the MAF so it can meter how much air is going in. OR you could set it up like a nitrous setup and inject fuel along with the extra air after the MAF.
 
You don't want to inject more air into your system after the MAF, you'll befuddle the EMS. Adding cold air just before the MAF won't have much effect when it gets to the combustion chamber. Adding compressed air near the MAF could kill your MAF.

If you want to reduce temps, you would be much better off (price and results) using a water sprayer. The energy required to compress the air (and mount all the hardware, etc.) is more than you think. It doesn't come out that cold either. Put your hand in front of a spray nozzle at 90 psi and you'll see.

You can cool the radiator, intercooler (if applicable), fuel line (get a fuel cooler from summittracing.com), or oil. None should be necessary unless you're really pushing the limits of your stock cooling system, except the intercooler.
 
Its not worth it. Think about it. Scuba tanks hold 80 cubic feet of air. That's not a lot through an engine. In order to add any power, you'd have to let it out so fast that you'd be out in no time.

Second, Nitrous is a liquid. When it changes phases (liquid to gas) you get the big temp drop. You won't get that temp drop without the phase change.

Third, oxygen is what burns. With compressed air, its only about 23% oxygen. Nitrous is MUCH higher and since its a liquid, you can store much more than a compressed gas.
 
Since you're going to spend about the same amount to spray a small blast of cool air into your intake, why not just get nitrous?

Also, nitrous is generally not allowed durring autox, and your crazy compressed air setup wouldn't be either.
 
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