Talk:Warm air intake

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I reverted from this:


 * A warm air intake or WAI is a system to raise the temperature of the intake air going into a car for the purpose of increasing the thermal efficiency of the internal-combustion engine. This term may also be used to describe a short ram air intake, a totally different intake modification.


 * There are claims about the density of the warmer air being responsible to lean the mixture, however even if this is the case, it is not possible to increase the thermal efficiency as much as some results have shown. An understanding of the basic Otto cycle and heat engines in the topic of Thermodynamics is required. The basic equation for thermal efficiency includes the division of the heat going into the engine, and the heat going out of the engine (Qlow/Qhigh). By raising the intake temperature, this reduces the amount of heat leaving the heat engine. As a result, a higher thermal efficiency is achieved.

The article may not explain it well, but the article is correct. The purpose is the decrease the mass flow rate of air for a given throttle position--or, for a given power, it allows opening the throttle wider. That reduces throttle losses. Throttle losses aren't discussed in a lot of intro thermo books, but they are very important in practice, especially in automobiles, which usually operate their engines well below peak torque capability.

I think I have a reference to add...Ccrrccrr (talk) 21:25, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The article is still not explicative enough... So this is only meant for carburated engines? Because fuel injected engines can just inject less fuel and be done with it, just turn on "eco mode" or whatever... Even with your explanation it doesn't seem like it's going to be worth it... the losses caused by a partially opened carburetor valve are negligible... doing this to an engine seems even worse than just limiting the travel of the accelerator so that you can't fully depress it... you are permanently starving the engine of air. Some electronics might try to compensate for it, but surely it's much cheaper to just buy a smaller engine from the get go.... I don't get it.201.178.51.174 (talk) 05:55, 23 October 2019 (UTC)