Re: Cold Air Induction

["Bryan L. Purdy" <purdyb2@ibm.net>]

There's nothing to be lost in playing around if you enjoy it.  You might
just find something while you're at it.

I have a couple problems with the idea however.  First, to lower the
temperature of air, the air needs to disipate energy.  This means that
something needs to absorb that energy.  In this case, it would be your
chips.  I would imagine though that those chips have a limited capicity for
absorbing and storing energy.  In a cooler, you have an insulated, closed
environment.  This would mean that there is a limit to how much energy is
added to the system and the chips can be designed around a theoretical
maximum temperature at time=0 and have capacity for slow leaks into the
environment.  In your airbox, you have an open system.  This means there is
a constant supply of more energy entering your environment.  I would think
that the chips would soon reach their capacity and you'd lose your affect.
Unless, of course, these chips have a means to disipate energy out of the
system at the same rate energy enters the system.  Other problems I can
think of are the flow rate of the air and the surface contact between the
air and chips.  It seems to me that the air would flow too quickly to allow
the chips to absorb energy from the air flow in the center of the air box,
away from the chips.  You also have fluid dynamic problems to deal with.
How are the chips going to effect the turbulance in the air box?  Any eddies
created?  How is cooling certain regions of the air box and not others going
to effect the flow?  The warmer air is going to gravitate towards the cooler
regions.  Is the air going to start swirling in the air box rather than flow
directly through the manifold?  These are just a few questions for you to
ponder.    Of course, I did sleep through most of my Fluids and Thermo
classes.

Bryan