Painting Intercoolers

[derdle]

If you think about water heating solar panels....they are balck to absorb heat from the atmosphere and to heat up water for your domestic hot wter system.

Now in reverse, your radiators in the house are white so that the hot water in the radiator emits the heat into the room. Same principle as for the FMIC??

Paul

[S4TAN]

but wouldn't the black paint absorb the heat from the metal drawing it to the surface to be transfered to the air

I know what you're saying but if it was on the inside then it could transfer it to the metal where the ambient airflow would dissipate it ...

If it's on the outside it could draw ambient heat and transfer it to the metal (and thus heat up the inside), or even insulate the cooler (again: keeping it hotter inside) - i suppose it all depends on the specific heat capacity coefficient of the paint versus that of the metal ... and the thermodynamics that then apply ...

I dunno - it's a tricky one! I suppose in a way you can look at intercoolers as a type of radiator: i.e. you want them to radiate heat absorbed from the hot air passing through them to the outside world ... i guess there must be a reason as to why most* radiators/intercoolers are silver/white...

* - but I know some aren't ...

[Nige_RS4]

If painting them black was the way to go - you would see it on all F1, rally and race cars for both IC and rads - in my book, it may look stealthier, but it's detrimental to the cooling efficiency of the core.

[dummi]

sounds fair, black increases heat transfer period both ways, so as long as your accelerating (very likely with a FMIC) you wont have a problem, only in traffic it gets hot... so the theory in my head tells me

[Blue_Thunder]

Black absorbs radiated heat. It shouldn't effect the convection and conduction transfer from the surrounding air.

Wow, I did learn something at school.

[GrahamS4]

I'm thinking back to my cans of water on top of the tripod, heated by the bunsen burner to boiling point. Now I'm sure the can painted black on the inside cooled down faster than the all silver can!

Never started with cold water to see which heated up quicker though!

[derdle]

Emergency heat blankets used by rescue teams are silver ... to reflect body heat back to the body, which should be warmer than the ambient air temperature.

Arabs wear white robes to reflect the heat of the day...so does this mean that burka clad muslim women must be sweating buckets?

Dr Al.....where are you?

[S4TAN]

Dr Al.....where are you?

He's busy fiddling with a fish, the dirty b*stard!

[GrahamS4]

Once we have this figured, who is going to paint their bonnet underside, turbos and exhaust

[whisky180]

doug painted my pipes where he removed the lower grills to make it more discrete rather than for performance purposes

[ZeroK66]

Doug asked me what colours I wanted? I had black on the pipes and silver on the IC. So he can obviously get them painted easy enough