ATI introduced the
industry's first intercooled supercharger system nearly 3 years before its
nearest competitor, and is still the only company that offers intercooling as an
integrated solution rather than just an after-thought. Intercooled
centrifugal supercharging is simply the most sophisticated, reliable and cost
effective method for substantially increasing the horsepower and torque of your
vehicle. Because intercooling removes heat, increases air/fuel density and
allows the use of full engine timing, a well-designed intercooled supercharger
system will typically produce approximately twice the gain of a non-intercooled
supercharger system, especially for fuel-injected motors running pump gas. And
after three years of saying that intercooling doesn't work, even our competitors
now agree with this.
The
Fundamental Solution
Typical gains (intercooled and NON intercooled).
All non-intercooled superchargers operate with an intake manifold temperature in the general range of 90 - 190° above ambient (outside air) temperature at 9 PSI. At the same boost level, an Intercooled Procharger operates at only 25° above ambient! This tremendous advantage from cooler air is just like the difference between driving your car on a cold winter's day vs. the blistering heat of summer! That's a real advantage that yields real performance. It helps to understand that no supercharger alone will ever begin to match the system efficiency of an intercooled supercharger system. This is simply because compressing air creates heat, as dictated by the laws of physics (Boyle's Gas Law). Even in the case of "perfect compression" (100% adiabatic efficiency, which is physically impossible without an intercooler - see chart), air temperature would increase by more than 75° at only 9 PSI, while the lower (40-80%) efficiencies of all non-intercooled superchargers produce substantially higher temperatures. Intercooled Procharger systems are the fundamental, OEM solution - because not only is less heat created when the air is compressed, the majority of this heat is actually removed through intercooling.
The bottom line is
that intercooled boost is substantially more powerful and safe for your engine
than hot, non-intercooled boost. Now that technology has developed to the point
that gear-driven superchargers are powerful enough to reliably blow through an
intercooler, it simply doesn't make sense not to intercool, especially
for fuel injected applications running pump gas. In fact, for high compression
engines or continuous duty applications, such as marine or towing, intercooling
is absolutely essential for reliability.
In basic terms, compressing air creates heat, while intercooling removes
heat. The illustration below may help to further explain the tremendous impact
of intercooling upon supercharger system efficiency and engine intake
temperatures:
