Cheap Horsepower-Ram air

[Kurt Bilinski]

At 05:06 PM 5/20/97 -0400, you wrote:
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><All Snipped!>
>
>Question:  Has anyone thought about those thermo-electric coolers for air 
>cooling?  Wondering if my broken "Coleman Cool-mate" might have a use yet...
>

This is similar to the electric supercharger.  The way to think of this, or
any enhancement, is about energy flow.

The energy to run this device comes from somewhere, and that's the engine.
So what do we have:

Engine energy - belt losses - alternator losses - charging losses - battery
losses - wire losses - thermo-electric cooler losses = negative net gain.

Go figure all of these and you will find no matter how great these coolers
are, more energy is lost powering them then you could ever get by their
benefit.

Kurt