Electric WAI

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by t vago

One could make much the same argument for using engine coolant for heating intake air - with the added proviso that the intake air being sucked in is also sucking the heat out of the coolant that the engine would need to warm up to operating temperature, thereby lengthening engine warmup times.

Coolant is the oem solution but only because its there in front, it makes far more sense to suck off the cat, that gets warm after only 90 seconds and hot after a few minutes.

Insight drivers find the cat gets them a real increase in the intake air temperature and best of all its almost free.

[XYZ]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

Hair dryers are more powerful than that, and even at that power I am still having difficulty with the concept having enough juice to work.

There's your test right there. Cold start, 1500w hair dryer in the intake, what happens? Or stick two 75w light bulbs in there. That is the power you are talking about.

What I what to know is how you will adapt a 120 VAC hair dryer to a 12 VDC automotive system?

[Frank Lee]

It's a TEST to see what effects- if any- there are. Success? Make a 12v version or better yet have both for when you have plug-in access. Fail? Stop.

[P-hack]

running it off the alternator is going to more than cancel out any gains, as will leaving it idle and plugged into the wall. Gotta use waste heat for it to be an efficiency gain, like the cat idea. Diesels use glow plugs because they have to, and smart ones only when they have to.

[RedDevil]

A 1500W hair drier blows out much more air than 4 liters per second, and it does heat it up far beyond the level I'm aiming at.
I have tried to heat the engine with a hair drier too. It does not work well.
I need to heat air, just air; not engine.

I do not worry about heat loss in the intake trajectory. Air is flowing in at over 10 liters per second (at low pressure). The total volume of the throttle house etc. is maybe just one liter, so the air spends just a tenth of a second there.
Sure it will lose some heat. It will not lose all.

Because of the adiabatic expansion caused by the throttle valve the temperature will drop by several degrees anyway; it just drops less deep than when it was not preheated. But there won't be a big temperature difference with the intake trajectory.

I like the lamp heater idea. I got a bunch of spare 55W halogens since my HID&LED conversion, so maybe they can be of use.

Of course if it does not work I will scrap it.
My research goal is: Will a 12V 150W air intake heater produce a beneficial effect on fuel consumption in the first few miles after a cold start?
I will run several tests alternating A and B until the result becomes clear.

I will gladly post my failures, like I did with my previous hair drier experiment.
If just to warn others not to try this, backed with proof.

[P-hack]

use a sufficient dimmer to tone down the hair dryer, and a kill-a-watt if you have one.

[Cobb]

Just safely mount 3 h3 halogen bulbs in your air box or make a custom square or pipe mount with the 3 bulbs in a row, use pipe as common ground. Then suck air to engine intake through pipe.

[jeff88]

Originally Posted by Cobb

make a custom square or pipe mount

What would a square intake do to the 'swirling' of the air inside of it? Or does it not matter?

[XYZ]

Originally Posted by jeff88

What would a square intake do to the 'swirling' of the air inside of it? Or does it not matter?

I was under the impression that the desired warm air would simply be warm, not turbulent.

Do we need to make the air dance, too?

[jeff88]

Originally Posted by XYZ

I was under the impression that the desired warm air would simply be warm, not turbulent.

Do we need to make the air dance, too?

I ask, because first I really don't know what would happen and thought somebody here might and second, because if it was detrimental to the system, then no real gains would be seen from the heater making it seem like a net zero gain, skewing the results.