Charge Air Cooler Vs Intercooler

Our versatile air to air charge air coolers and intercoolers can be tailored to a wide range of applications.

Charge air cooler vs intercooler.

An air to air refers to how the intercooler cools the charged air by using the core as a heat sink. The radiator is located in the cool air stream up. The term aftercooler became synonymous with air to water coolers because this is the term vortech uses to describe their coolers which are water cooled. This is really just a different name for charge air cooler.

These are further helped by the little fins or plates between the tubes. And the compressed air coming out of the last supercharger went through a charge air cooler or aftercooler before it went into the intake manifold. Water to air intercooler. There is some confusion in terminology between aftercooler intercooler and charge air cooler.

So while technically incorrect we will still use the popular terms intercooler to mean any air cooled charge cooler and aftercooler to mean any water cooled charge cooler. This type of set up can be mounted anywhere and just needs to have water plumbed to it. Turbo cooler charged air cooler turbo. What is a charge air cooler.

This is the more generic term for intercoolers aftercoolers and turbo coolers. The charge air cooler is a heat exchanger that sits between the turbo charger and the engine. Charged air passes through the tubes of the intercooler while ambient air flows over the tubes to remove the heat the charged air transferred to the intercooler tubes. Assuming equivalent efficiency levels an air to air cooler s surface area must be much larger than that.

Charge coolers are more efficant than intercoolers in general. Charge coolers also offer a shorter path from turbo to engine as the cooler is situated in the engine bay as close to the tb as possible. What is a turbo cooler. The dont tend to need alo of space and water is a far better conducter of heat than air is.

A well designed air to air charge air cooler or intercooler represents the most cost efficient and reliable method of reducing intake charge temperatures in turbocharged supercharged or compressed air applications. Intercoolers may use either ambient air or liquid coolant to reduce charge air temperature. So technically the intercoolers were between the superchargers and the aftercooler was after the last supercharger. In the past aircraft engines would run turbochargers in stages where the first stage compressor would feed the inlet of the second stage compressor that would.