--Electric Supercharger??--
 

This might be a dumb question, but i was wondering if these "electric superchargers" that you find on ebay will actually do anything? Or are they a complete joke? I wouldnt expect huge gains from them or anything, but how come i never hear of people sticking these on the end of their cold air intakes?

because they work just as well as fuel line magnets and the turbonators.

the only thing they are good for is taking money out of your wallet, and stuffing it into the sellers wallet.

Charlatans ! Snake Oil Peddlers ! Blasphemers !
I can't believe they even let people sell that crap.

tjc, you know where I can get some of those fuel line magics? lol

They sell those things because the profit margin is high, and uninformed dipsticks buy them.

If I didn't have at least *some* morals I'd be a zillionare by now selling such trinkets.

Though last week, I welded together a pair of fart pipes for some neighborhood kid and hit him for $200. One of them is functional, the other sits on the driver's side as a "poser" fart pipe.

A fool and his money are easily parted.

Might as well take their money if they are willing to part with it. Doesn't suit you, it seems to have suited him. I see no problem.

The electric superchargers though, that's just plain wrong. Perhaps I should try one on my mower? I might make a psi or two in an 850cc engine.

Oh, don't get me started on the forced induction mower concept.

I have this 12HP riding mower.... and this really huge smog pump...

Geeze frederic, I've seen stranger things. I wonder how many folks would pay some money to have a kit made for their Craftsman?

I have no idea... but if my idea works... I may have to put together a generic kit :)

Initial testing worked well, using a smog pump off my Olds and a long hose to the riding mower :)

really fred, you need to get a real job.
you have wwwwaaayyyy to much time on your hands. :-X16 :-banghead

Ya know there is no reason that an electric supercharger wouldn't work. But the direct drive super doesn't lose power by transfering over to electric and then electric back to propeller. It drives the propeller directly off the crankshaft.

I'm wondering how big of a electric motor and how many amps it would draw in order to create something like 6 psi in a v10. How big of an alternator would be required and how many Horsepower would it take off the engine. Of course their would be some way of reducing the electric motors speed to account for engine RPM's and this would be as instantaneous as direct belt drive.

Tony

Ya know there is no reason that an electric supercharger wouldn't work

They work - just no where near as well as a normal supercharger...
For 1. you would have HUGE current draw, a supercharger will draw propably about 1/4 (just a rough estimation) of the net power it creates straight from the crankshaft...
You are converting rotary power - electricity, back to rotary power. Much more efficient if you get it in its original form.


The long and the short of it. No thanks :-X22

Yes, hmmmm well, I think... belt/direct drive would be most efficient. But I havn't seen anyactual studis on it. I don't think It needs studied really. But there are some alternators and electric motors boasting 85-90 % efficiencies.
But obviously, direct drive is close to 100% efficient with allowances for any belt slippage or belt/cog tension.

These electric supers that are sold on EBay would probably only work on 1.6-2.0 liter engines. And I dont' know if they can obtain the rpms needed to get to create enough boost to make any real difference.

But, I'm wondering how much energy (and how many alternators and batteries) would be needed to make it work.
Tony

I have heard that on a top fuel dragster the parasitic losses in one of their blowers is in the neighborhood of 750 HP. On a street car I'm sure it would be a lot less, more along the lines of 60 HP.
Also just a note here, in order to be called a supercharger a blower has to raise the manifold pressure to above 7 PSIG.

750hp is about right. But remember, the engine is producing 8000+ HP with 500cid. So 750HP "spent" is well worth it.

Same for consumer grade stuff... spend 60HP, get 200HP (or so).

So what is a pump called if it doesn't meet that 7psig threshold??? Many of the aftermarket kits designed for stock internals for Ford mod motors are limited to 6psig or less. The H-D supercharger setup on F150s in '02-'03 was a 6psig setup, based on the Lightnings kit with a smaller pulley set. Was Ford wrong in calling it a supercharger? Or is this a rule from dragracing? My impression is that if it uses the power off the crank and gives a positive pressure gain, it's a supercharger.

These electric motors are nothing more than expensive fans.

-Kerry

http://www.turbomagazine.com/tech/0406tur_knight_turbo_electric_supercharger/

This one will flow enough air for a small engine.
But look at the setup. Not exactly a $39.99 undertaking.
Current draw for a large engine will be tremdous...

A tube with a little fan on it will not flow enough air for an engine.
That's why blowers have industrial-strength rotors, screws or impellers to compress enough air.

Manifold pressure less than 7 PSI is merely a "blown engine" or "boosted". The term "supercharged is an engineering term and technnally (SP?) Ford is wrong but the word supercharger sells more than the word boosted.

A device driven mechanically by the engine to boost manifold pressure would be called a blower.

OK... interesting. I would have figure blown was more having to do with drag cars and their roots set ups. Boosted does bring back memories of being a child to big to fit in a high chair, but not big enough to eat sitting in a chair.:-D

The things you learn.:-X06

-Kerry

I just call any engine running over atmospheric pressure (ambient) "a forced induction engine".

I'll let others define and argue specific terms. Me, I'm gonna make stuff :)

So Frederic, from seeing your posts on other threads, I know your a think it through WiZ (pat on back smiley inserted here). Do you know how to determine how much horsepower would be loss through alternator/electric motor vs direct drive super. Would there be any benefit whatsoever to be able to modulate the compressor wheel RPM's seperately from engine RPM's? One benefit would be the availability of "full boost" at extremely low RPM's. Of course the electric motors would need brakes on them so not to overboost so severly on deceleration.

It could become quite controllable to go with an electric system, but would it have any advantage?

TG

Electric supercharger! If you want more power, just strap on a leaf blower. :-D

http://videos.streetfire.net/search/...ad23ca9564.htm

haha i wish i had a dyno. that video was sooo cool.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha....suprised they didnt blow the welds on there intake with all that boost and nawz man. :p

That gave me a crazy idea tho...you could make a go-cart with a leafblower engine and plumb the blower into the intake of the engine. It would work!

to figure horse power loss of the electric blower you would need to know several factors . first you would need to know current draw (amperage )of the blower motor at full boost this will be affected by engine rpm and effeciency due to resistance to the fan once the fan actually compresses air motor load will increase and will make current draw vary .so a hypothetical set rpm on the engine and blower motor would need to be used so amperage would stay constant . then you would need to know magnetic draw (clamping force ) of the altenator when supplying that amount of current (more current draw more clamping force ) this then could be then converted to hp or torque .

Sorry I missed your reply. This thread came back as "read" for days, then today it appeared as "unread". So, I never clicked on it.

Converting rotation energy (crankshaft) to electrical energy (via alternator) has losses associated with the conversion. While alternators have bearings, there is some friction, and this friction results in heat - which is energy that is not being utilized to make electricity.

Converting electrical energy (from alternator) into rotation energy (motor rotation) suffers from the same problem - friction, but also motor design, number of poles, all sorts of things, so there are a lot of inefficiencies with this conversion as well.

A typical, average, run of the mill belt-driven supercharger typically takes about 10% of the crankshaft's HP for itself. So if you have a 300HP engine, 30HP of that is going into the supercharger to achieve a reasonable level of boost.

To achieve whatever boost level the above results in, we can calculate backwards what the alternator --> electric motor has to do in order to achieve the same thing.

Since 746 watts equates to 1 horsepower... and we need 30HP in my above example...

W (watts) = V (volts)* I (amps)
746W = 14V * I
53.29A = I

For each HP we need to drive the electric supercharger, we need 53.29 amps. So for 30 HP in my above example, you need 1598.7 amps going into the motor.

We're not done yet :)

I did an experiment a while back whereas I tried to calculate the losses of an alternator driving a motor, to determine the power going in versus the power going out, and with the junk I used I approximated the loss of the two things together to be in the 50% range. So if that is in fact true, that means you really need about 3200 amps to drive an electric supercharger to the same boost level as an ordinary, belt driven supercharger.

Now, you have two choices. You can say holy s--- and not think about it again, or you can think about this a bit more.

If you did size an electric supercharger that big, you don't have to run it off the alternator - instead, you could run it off large battery banks the way some of the competition-class audio guys do.

A typical car battery can provide say, 500A of cranking power for the starter. You could have several of them in parallel, so that for a short time anyway, you could drive an electric supercharger for that short time. Then disengage things, and recharge the batteries when you don't need boost.

Very doable, in fact these types of experiments have been done in the past 40-50 years or so - it's not a new idea.

It's just a really complex, difficult to manufacture reliably and affordably, type idea. But it's reasonable and doable if you have the means and energy.

Personally, simplicity is wonderful. Supercharger with a belt, providing boost all day long when you mash the pedal with your right foot.

Actually, I prefer turbocharging for a variety of reasons, but I won't go into that since that's not addressing your question. But in a nutshell, that's how you calculate the power required to drive an electric supercharger.

Essentially it comes down to "a heck of a lot".

Top fuel funny cars for example, which produce what, 8000 HP or something insane like that? Easily expell 800-900 HP to drive the huge supercharger on top of the engine. If you were to watch the engines run on a dyno, in extreme slow motion, you'd actually see the belt stretch on the take up side and slap around on the other side... almost an inch. Imagine the power involved to stretch a 3" or 4" wide rubber belt with fiberglass or metal wire reinforcement, a whole inch. Coincidentally, it's about 800-900 HP, or about 600KW of energy.

Hope that helps!

I use a leaf blower on my engine and get better results but the cost of extension cords is killing me

CPR is my local Speed Shop. Those guys are nuts...

you might as well change out the blinker fluid while your at it and get new spark plugs as well... LOL

http://kalecoauto.com/images/BlinkFluid.jpg
:-X22 i found that blinker fluid for ya too!

well frederic, i'm still cuttin the grass w/the old 70's-ish snapper w/a kohler mabey a a 12-71gmc would look pretty good hanging off the side. think you could think me up a manifold solution??:-X14

[QUOTE=Sycostang67]Electric supercharger! If you want more power, just strap on a leaf blower. :-D

http://videos.streetfire.net/search/leaf+blower/0/wm/ab544e3b-5dff-416d-9cfd-a1ad23ca9564.htm[/QUOTE]

that is redicoulous. 50hp gain with a leafblow, blowing

naaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!1

I wouldn't call them a Super Charger or the electronic turbo charger. They are more of a just a forced Air kit. There are a few problems I have with those. They are always pushing air at the same pressure. The Hi or None! Which come at a cost too used those. It will all ways run lean which can burnt out valve's. The Carb will have problems with tuning it. And Fuel injection will the computer will work the problem out and you will not gain any extra hp. If your going to waste the money with one of these electronic things. Get a good air filter and a modular controlled electronic turbo charger. Or get a fan from a PC and just connect it into your air cleaner.. lol..

hahahaha ohhhh *****!!

All one needs to do now is time the throttle cable for your engine AND a 2smoke leaf blower........:-X19

That should be easy....

I am not convinced that an electric `charger` won`t work, but gains will be nominal.

If the average V8 can swallow 850cfm then your electric charger needs to surpass that to make BOOST......

and THEN it needs to be variable to match the engines needs

This is all sounding like it should cost near $5000 or more... isn`t a roush around that price...

bunch of crap.

Need a throttle control sensor (remember the tyco and afx racetracks's from the 80's?) So let's see... A pistol grip tps duck-taped to the throttle cable and a bank of red top optima's with the leaf blower atop a swapped in chevy 350 would be a magazine editor's dream. LOL

Electric Supercharger?

Leaf Blower Supercharger - Hot Rod Magazine

Here's 1 that might work. The pressure and volume is very impressive and the cost is inder $500.00. Somebody needs to try it and let the rest of us know the results. :-X0A6
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