Insomniatic idea an electric supercharger

[Guest tony78_280z]

An overactive brain keeps me awake sometimes. Tonight I've been surfin the web reading about these so called "electric superchargers" which are nothing more than ram air systems fed via a poweful fan. They probably increase air flow to the intake, and little else.

 

Then while reaching for my mouse I spilled my iced drink on my crotch, and an Idea hit me! ...

 

What if someone were to take one of these 24000 rpm electric fans advertised, take of the blades and fasten the spin shaft to a turbo. Plumb the intake to the turbo, but leave the exhaust side of the turbo unconnected. The electric fan motor would turn the turbo at 24000 rpms and create boost right? Of course the fan would probably burn up quickly, but that aside wouldn't that make an ACTUAL electronic supercharger with some real boost levels? At least 4-6psi?

 

I'm simply speculating and don't intend to run out and buy a fan and get a test turbo and a boost guage. I'm just wondering if y'all think the theory is sound or if I'm simply tired and need to go dry off my crotch, and try to go back to sleep.

 

I'm sure I'm not the first person to have thought of this. So where are all the engineers on this subject?

[Guest bastaad525]

There is one 'real deal' electric supercharger... it basically looks like three starter motors wrapped together with a supercharger, runs off it's own batteries, and can make a LOT of boost, i think it defaults at like 12 psi? It's friggin expensive, and can only be used for about 15 seconds at a time before it needs to recharge... so it's comparable to nitrous except you dont gotta pay for refills. I think it's made by Thomas Knight?? If not I forget but someone would know the name of it.

[Guest Magnum Rockwilder]

Two things:

 

Turbos spin 150k rpm. I don't know if 24k rpm would even do anything. Also, the 24k rpm rating of the fan is unloaded. It would be much less under load, so the more pressure(boost) it created the slower it would turn.

 

You have all that exhaust going to waste anyways, so why not just hook the turbo up to the exhaust like it's designed to be? It would be easier to do some exhaust plumbing than it would to install an electric motor on a turbo.

[mtcookson]

yeah... you would need one very powerful electric motor to make some actual boost. taking that thomas knight one for instance, he's using three starter motors (most likely geared to allow the compressor to spin much faster than the starter motors are capable of). lets say for instance he was using a performance high torque starter motor, just looking at summit racing, there's one that puts out 180 ft. lb. of torque (a bit lower than others offered but still quite a bit, good to 12:1 compression). they generally put out a bit less than 2 hp. so three of them gets you up to about 6 hp and lets just say 600 ft. lb. of torque for the hell of it (which actually could be needed for a roots since they tend to be a bit harder to turn and whatnot (heavier internals, etc. etc.)) that's definitely a hell of a lot more power than you'd ever get out of the smaller blower motors that those fake electric s/c's use.

 

so basically, you'd have to get an electric motor with a lot of power to really make some boost and hold it stead... even then... you probably couldn't opperate it for too long.

 

i bet you could get one of the larger 5 hp motors and run it for extended amounts of time... but those things are large... very large. (but really... not larger than a big turbo. however a large motor coupled with a s/c, turbo, or roots blower will take up a hell of a lot of space).

[cygnusx1]

To spin a turbo compressor at full song with an outlet pressure maintained at 15-20psi , just to give a perspective, probably takes about 20-40 horsepower+++ You don't get something for nothing...

 

Without calculation, these are total guesstimate numbers. The actual numbers are big for sure. Now go wipe the iced tea off the couch.

[Guest Magnum Rockwilder]

How does it take 20-40hp to spin a turbo, when a turbo creates less backpressure than a typical street exhaust system?

 

The engine is creating exhaust regardless of whether the turbo is there or not.

[mtcookson]

yeah, for most street applications i think 20-40 hp loss might be a tiny bit high for a turbo. that's generally what roots s/c's take from the crank if i remember correctly and we all should know by now that a turbo is much more efficient.

 

it definitely takes some power that as said above, no power is free... if you could invent something that was the opposite... you'll either be the richest person in existance or simply cause a world wide economic collapse. (i'd lean for the latter myself)

[Guest boosted]

better off dropping a gass weed wacker engine in your hatch to drive your turbo and or supercharger then figure how to plumb it to the TB

sorry my brain just Farted:(

[cygnusx1]

It takes horsepower to compress and flow air. No matter how you slice it, the bottom line is still the same. Turbos are more efficient only because they use some of the energy of from the engine that would normally get thrown out. Think about it this way: Place an exhaust restriction in an N/A motor downpipe that causes exhaust manifold pressures to rise into the 10's of pounds of backpressure and how much horsepower do you think you would lose? Well that's how much HP+ it takes to spin the turbo. It's not quite that simple but it gives a feel for the powers invloved.

 

I had though about running a leaf blower strapped to the front end feeding air into my original N/A motor...until I found a running 83ZXT car on Ebay for $530. lol

[mtcookson]

I had though about running a leaf blower strapped to the front end feeding air into my original N/A motor...until I found a running 83ZXT car on Ebay for $530. lol

 

only problem with that is the leaf blower is still a blower.... a turbo and s/c's are compressors which is why they can provide boost to an engine. a leaf blower might add enough air for a few horses down low... but mid to upper rpm's will probably see nothing or even suffer due to restrictions.

 

now, if you took the leaf blower apart and hooked the motor up to a centrifugal s/c (using the belts and pulleys still) i'm sure that might just work. you'd have to have a custom pulley made most likely so that you don't under or overboost the s/c... but that'd definitely be something interesting to do.

 

for the car's engine... that would technically be free power considering another engine is running the s/c. in the end though... its probably more complex than one would want to deal with but that'd be pretty cool to have a solid amount of boost from idle to redline

[Guest tony78_280z]

Hooking a leafblower motor to turn a supercharger is going to be more expensive than a turbo. Turbos are getting cheap, and easy to find in a junk yard. If one could fasten a pulley and mount the turbo to the motor then one could "gear" (smaller pully on the turbo, bigger pully on the blower motor) the leaf blower motor up so that it spins the turbo at the required RPM, and I think a leaf blower motor is stronge enough that could still turn the turbo after being geared.

 

It'd drain alot on the Alternator/Battery so a second Alternator/Battery may be required. But I seen kits for this type of thing. I still think one could get about 4-6psi out of it.

 

A turbo is still more economic as it uses the exhaust pressure already present. But it wouldn't have lag. And a carbed turbo motor needs to be over jetted so enough fuel is pushed into the motor when the boost kicks in. So at idle and low rpm the car is going to be running way rich.* With a supercharger or this electric-turbo the boost is constant, thus the carb is tuned once.

 

I just wonder if anyone has fabricated and tested something like this.

 

* = (Carbs work best with boost when one uses a "pull through" setup that pulls air through the carb and into the motor and the carb has properly jetted vacuum secondaries. The primaries runs until boost kicks in forcing the secondaries open. Turbos instead of pulls through the carb it pushes air into the carb, and a vacuum secondary is used. A Pull through carb is very hard to set up with turbos. A not too stabel either.)

[Guest 240zJake]

Just another thought, I know Dyson, the vacuum cleaner guy, is working on a new blower for his vacuum that is basically a plastic turbocharger, that might work. In the end though a turbo with adjustable boost levels would still be a better option and cheaper.

 

Hey maybe someone could take a small, really small, jet turbine engine and hook the drive shaft to the cool side of a turbo? lol

 

Jake

[Guest tony78_280z]

Remind me to not to post when I can't sleep anymore =)

[mtcookson]

in the end, besides running a totally seperate engine (gas powered), nothing will be as efficient on the *driving* engine as a turbo would.

 

if one did the leaf blower thing with pulleys i think it would be a much better idea to use a centrifugal s/c compressor because those tend to spin no more than about 50,000 rpm... a turbo spins well over 100,000 rpm... even up to 150,000 rpm on some i've seen. like i showed in another thread, the pulley setup would just be crazy to try getting something to spin that fast. < 50,000 rpm would be a much easier speed to attain on a pulley system.

[caen fred]

Ok, what if... one use one (sevral) electric tire air compressor... the pro one make up to 17psi... and run multiple hoses (6) close to the injector in the manifold... Just wondering!

[Guest tony78_280z]

That would probably push the PSI needed, not the CFM though. =)

[mtcookson]

yeah, even most large shop air compressor only put out a few cfm even though the pressure is very high.

 

even with something like the rotary screw compressor, you'd need a 75 hp compressor to produce 386 cfm and up to 100 psi (i'm not sure at what pressure the 386 cfm is produced at... but most likely its too much to run in anything less than a large diesel engine for a semi truck).

 

basically... there's not really any better way to make a forced induction setup. the only way i can see improving what we have is to make a cvt supercharger. this would allow for instant, full boost all of the way to redline. not as efficient as a turbo still due to being ran by the belt but could possibly make a car faster since it would have nearly no lag at all. that's my idea for a good supercharger. since i have no way of making one though, i'll stick with a turbo. lol

[2126]

After reading this post......maybe you guys should cut back a little on what ever you're smoking. Good imaginations do make grand ideas, but the hard part is incorporating it into a practical and efficient working system....isn't that why we currently have EFI, turbocharges, supercharged, and nitrous?

 

P.S. I good friend once said, when asked if he smoked the herb anymore........" Well, I don't smoke it anymore.....but then again, I don't smoke it any less either!!"

[Guest tony78_280z]

We are simply discussing an idea. It is a bizare Idea that I had when I couldn't sleep one night, and much of it is just rambling. I don't agree that Turbos and Super Chargers are simply the end of the line for ideas that will create boost. Someone will come up with something. I'm not saying that I'm the creative mind behind the next big thing. Or that the idea will strike me while awake late at night. (Most of my best idears come when driving, or drifting off to sleep.)

 

Infact the best thing about this thread is that it gets dumb ideas out in the open and allows others to shoot them down before one of us goes and wastes time, money, and effort on an Idea that another sees will simply not work. It's kind of a think tank for those who think "what if i did it this way".

 

Many of my idears do work. Like grinding out the spread bores on a manifold to accept a squae bore carb, and filling in the ECU channel with melted aluminum after making a sand mold in it. It made a very noticeable improvement, but I bet someone here would have told me that it wouldn't work. Notice the bottom of my signature?

 

Another half baked idear I'm having is adding a carb heat shield and rigging up a little fan that will push a bit of cool air across it to keep it cool even at a stand still. Could be a dumb idea, could make the carb air/fuel alot cooler. I just can't stop my self!

[cygnusx1]

I work in the innovation group of a large corporation. All we do is brain fart all day long. I am used to this sort of thing. I am a Mechanical Engineer and I deal with "colorful" marketing types all the time. Many wacky ideas sometimes churn into one, really useful, undiscovered one.

 

I enjoy searching patents at http://www.uspto.gov ....search for electric superchargers, you might even get a few hits.