Electric Turbo?

[VAVolvo]

Ok, so there is like TONS of leaves everywhere in my yard so I crank up the leaf blower and go to work (it's electric BTW). Then it dawns on me ....electric...blower....intake...boost....turbo?

Okay, idea in the rough draft form (some smart a$$ here is going to try to argue), so let's say you hook up the end of the electric blower to the intake and is controlled by the amount of output the car is giving, higher rev, more power to the blower, more air forced into the intake (haven't come up with a way to control the amount of power though). Hmmm...turbo? Of course, I can't compare with the actual force a real turbo is giving, probably a lot more psi a "electric leaf blower" can give. Just a thought.

PEACE!

I'm going to be working on this with my colleagues over at the University engineering department, I'll update you on my progress, if any at all. B)

[Ivanfbi]

you mean supercharger??? cuz supercharger is the same force induction, but it works using electricity....you want to make somthn like that?

[Noahkk19]

I'm guessing you'd be able to push about .5psi if this idea goes through

[JESSEXC]

:D Good luck! Make sure you get a before and after on the dyno.

[lax01]

and lemme guess, you're going to try to market this to car enthusiasts as a quick 40 hp?

[Turbo Brick]

[jross]

Well... I can see a small use for a leafblower in my intake. I've seen turbos spooled off a leaf blower, so if you can help me get on boost faster...

[ChuckV986]

The challenge I see with this is that there are two many conversions of useful energy. HP-->Electricity-->Motion

Too many places for energy to escape, I'd think. You'd be better off running it like an SC with pulleys hooked up directly to the crank pulley. That way you change the energy's form fewer times. Your idea, while not bad, just seems an overcomplicated way to solve a problem that's already been solved to me. I don't mean that in an offensive way, I think you'd need to spend A LOT of money to see any measurable power gains. You waste a lot of energy going from motion, to electricity, back to motion. Esp given with an electric motor you face further losses due to heat. A standard, run of the mill SC setup would be much more effective, and much less expensive to set up.

Using an electic motor to help "pre spool" a turbo might be a decent idea to cut down on turbo lag, though you'd still suffer some power loss before you hit an RPM where full could be naturally achieved. Attaching the motor/battery directly to the turbo with a clutch so that on spool-down some of the energy of the still spinning turbine could be used to regenerate SOME of the lost power.

[Patrick.]

Okay - in all honesty, has anyone had any positive experience with an "electric supercharger" like this one, or known anybody who has? A friend of mine installed one on his civic (w/ intake, exhaust... blah, blah, blah) a couple of summers ago- I could trounce him before he put that thing on, and I still beat him easily after, so I didn't really think the supercharger was worth crap. Please shed some light on whether or not these new piles of junk are completely useless, or if they might net a few extra HP.

"supercharger"

Thanks,

Pat M.

[PyROTech]

what concerns me is that university students in the eng department havent had a mass suicide yet.

[ChuckV986]

Okay - in all honesty, has anyone had any positive experience with an "electric supercharger" like this one, or known anybody who has? A friend of mine installed one on his civic (w/ intake, exhaust... blah, blah, blah) a couple of summers ago- I could trounce him before he put that thing on, and I still beat him easily after, so I didn't really think the supercharger was worth crap. Please shed some light on whether or not these new piles of junk are completely useless, or if they might net a few extra HP.

"supercharger"

Thanks,

    Pat M.

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Anything like that on ebay is garunteed stuff. An effective electric SC would require a large, power intensive motor. This would mean upgrades to the electrical system of the entire car, and overdrive pulleys at least for the alternator turn more engine HP into electricity. The average SC actually drains quite a bit of hp, upwards of 15-20, and thats with a direct connection to the engine. When you change the state of energy, you will ALWAYS loose some, or most in the majority of cases to heat, radiation, etc. Even petrol engines are only about 30% efficient. The drain on a motor to power a unit large enough to pump enough air to see any gains would be tremendous. 15-20hp electric motors tend to be pretty big, and draw A LOT of power. I suspect the drain on the engine to power one would be upwards of 40-50hp, if not more. Energy is changing forms twice. From motion to electricity, and then electricity back to motion. Under perfect condtions, I couldn't imagine these transfers being more efficient than 50%. Using this very generous number 35-45 engine hp would be required to produce 15-20 electric hp, which would be needed to turn the SC fast enough to produce measureable boost. Adding an electric motor would also add another source of heat, which would surely build up rapidly given how fast it would have to be turning the SC. More cooling required, and another highly stressed part to break.

IE: Take a 100hp civic. You want 7psi of boost, about the maximum you can take without rebuidling the engine internally. You get a positive displacement SC requiring 15-20hp to generate sufficient speed for 7psi of boost. You retrofit it to accept a 15-20hp electric motor, after somehow finding room for it in the engine compartment. You have a PHD electrical engineer from MIT wire everything for you so that the conversion of energy from the engine to electricty will be 50% efficient, and the conversion of electricity to motion in the motor will often be 50% efficient. I'd think that these numbers would be impossible to achieve, but I'm no electrical engineer so who knows. You also have someone else redesign to cooling system of the car to cool the electic motor for 100,000+ rpm duty while remaining cool, in addition to adding an intercooler, upgraded fueling, etc. God knows how much you've spent at this point. At 0 boost, you have somehwhere between 55 and 66hp, provided you want instantanious spool up of the SC when you hit the throttle. Hopefully the civic motor will generate the required 34-45hp at idle, otherwise that would need to be raised... In a relatively high compression NA motor that has had everything opened up to allow for optimum flow, I'd guess you'd get about 4-5hp per PSI. Let's be generous and say 7. You hit 7PSI of boost, enough to gain 49hp at peak. You are now up to a whoping 104-115hp at peak, congratulations! If you're lucky, that will knock .05-.1 off of your quarter mile time. Think the engine can take more? Ok, lets crank it up to 10psi, once again using our very generous 7hp per psi in a motor built for NA operation. That yields 21hp over our previous numbers, so youre now running making 125-136hp. You might be able to hang with a neon now! Perhaps even run better than 16.5 in the quarter! All joking aside, a 30%ish gain in power is significant, but is it really all the great when you consider that youre now running 10psi of boost on a weak fairly high compression motor? You've also spent thousands on an SC, thousands more to rebuilt the electical system, and another couple thousand to free up absolutely EVERYTHING that might restrict to flow of air in or out of the motor. Let's conservatively assume you spent 10-13k in your buildup. Is this really worth it when you consider that you could have spent the same money rebuilding the engine, and installing either an SC or TC that would generate FAR more power far more reliably?

The numbers I used in that example were redicously favorable for the ESC setup, and at 7psi you ended up with at best 15hp over stock. How reliable would the engine be at 7psi? Only time would tell. 30% would probaly be a more realistic number for efficieny, and 4-5hp would be more realistic for gains. Using these numbers, you'd loose 43-58hp to run the blower, and would gain 28-35hp at peak using 7psi of boost. Nuff said there i think.

[lax01]

what concerns me is that university students in the eng department havent had a mass suicide yet.

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English department?

jk jk

[BeachRat]

A novel idea, that shouldn't be ridiculed on a proposal stage, but I think at this point if they aren't in existence it's probably not practical. My favorite part was:

"The Electric Supercharger features:

-Tough reinforced plastic housing"

Because a turbine spinning that fast in an engine compartment is going to love being housed in plastic. It comes with a lifetime warranty, which tells me, as a consumer this:

"It's durable enough to last at the intended specifications. However, the 'intended' specifications do not require it to be as durable as would be needed for the kind of power/performance you're anticipating/hoping/expecting from an electric blower."

I'd go as far as to say putting an electric blower outside the engine somewhere to cool it off would be more beneficial...

[Che'_Moderator]

you mean supercharger??? cuz supercharger is the same force induction, but it works using electricity....you want to make somthn like that?

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Where can I get an electric SC? I want one for my Neon.

[850drag]

I dont know but I think a super charger is a waste of time, it requires you to re-configure all you belts and so on