I work for a research team at UNH and have access to generous amounts of liquid nitrogen and dry ice. I was kind of batting around the idea of pouring the stuff into a water to air intercooler. The idea is that by reducing the charge temperature to about -100 degrees celcius, one could essentially double the density yet run almost no risk of detonation.

Has anyone ever tried this?

 

Sure, it's called nitrous oxide injection. And yes, you can detonate with NOI or with what you're talking about. Detonation occurs in a lean condition...if you cool the air -100*C and don't adjust the fuel accordingly, you are going to run lean and detonate.

 

yupper

 

The fuel management would of course be modified to compensate. (This is like saying there is no point in turbocharging because you will run lean.)

Cool intake charge is normally considered an excelent deterrant to detonation. This would be especially true in this case becuase the engine would be running at very cool temperatures (no hot spots would have a chance to develop in the combustion chamber). I do not know the specific heat of liquid nitrogen, howver I cannot imagine it lasting for much longer than one run per intercooler filling.

This would even work great for NA cars; cooling the air by 150 C or so would just about double the density of the charge air (if it doesn't crack the cyilnder head or anything). Just a thought.

 

Nitrous Express sells an intercooler sprayer that sprays either compressed liquid CO2 or N2O onto the intercooler, lowering the temperature by about 50*C [I think that's a good ballpark figure]. Much gains are to be had by this, but again, tuning is needed.

 

I always thought there was a specific air temperature required for proper fuel mixutre. Any thoughts on this?

 

You're probably right...if you think about it it makes sense that there is a point of diminishing returns.