Hi ALL Drag Racers :
You're in an airplane, being chased AND shot at by a fighter plane.
The best method to escape is to gain altitude.
Your piston engine needs more oxygen at higher altitudes.
Thus NOS or Supercharging is the best method.
A Centrifical Compressor driven by a Turbine works well, one that is NOT connected to the engine exhaust.
I have one of these items and would like to fit it to a drag racing car ?

 

What does it rely upon, slipstream air??

 

Hi, the "hot side" turbine has a fuel/oxygen inlet AND a Sparkplug.
The normal exhaust inlet is sealed as in a combustion chamber.

 

A gas turbine powered supercharger. I would suspect it to be less efficient than a normal turbocharger.

 

SURE, though there would be NO Exhaust Back Pressure AND no changes to the Exhaust System

 

And it IS for drag racing, so this is about all-out performance for seconds at a time.
But being on the ragged edge of death during a run, I would expect a fairly sophisticated microprocessor to be required to properly govern this machine at said ragged edge of death.

 

SURE, I have created MY OWN Micros.
My first was to use an HC-11 AND MY OWN HREIC Chip (DIS) that allowed the Gating of Ignition Coils.

The MOST SIMPLE "chip" can operate Fuel/Oxygen MOSFETS used to control Solenoid Injectors.

Thus "boost" control is based on MAP/RPM.

 

Please explain "gating coils".
Pardon my ignorance.....

 

That era of forced induction designs weren’t the most efficient. Most relied on dual charging with a supercharger and a turbo. Supercharger for lower altitude and immediate performance, with the turbo taking over at higher altitudes.

http://rwebs.net/avhistory/opsman/geturbo/geturbo.htm

 

One more option to consider, or at least do the math on... Electric supercharger. Basically take a Procharger and drive it with a large electric motor. It would of course need a large battery as well. It would probably weigh more, but maybe not a lot more, and it might be easier to maintain and tune. Might be hard to find a place for the motor though, it won't be small.

I've been playing with "personal electric vehicles" lately (skateboards, bikes, etc) so this seems like a fun intersection of two hobbies.

Assuming it takes 50hp to drive the compressor (wild guess)
50hp = 37kw

Here's motor-controller pair that might work: 45 kW Electric Propulsion System (mgm-compro.com)
Runs at 400v, so maybe go with a single strand of 95 lithium cells in series. (95 cells x 4.2 volts = 399v)
Molicel P42A cells can put out 45 amps, which at 440v would be just under 45kw limit of the motor/controller combo.
Might cost $2k or so for the battery.
Would probably run the compressor for about 4 minutes total, maybe call it twenty 10-second passes to be on the safe side.

Then there's the matter of gearing the motor to the compressor at the right ratio.

It might work.