This needs to come out immediately so BMW can make their grilles smaller again.

The idea that F1 consistently bans innovation boggles the mind. Well, until one considers the money involved, then the mind is deboggled. That being said, graphene is awesome!

One thing..Even if the fluid is more efficient, you need to be able to extract the heat. Air can only pull so much into it, so you would still need a similar air flow volume to pull the same heat for just a fluidic change.

The switch to electric cars has shown that even when manufacturers have the option to go radical with new designs they just churn out stuff that looks like what we are used to. Making cooing requirements less won't really change anything apart from making parts smaller and the fluid changes more expensive.

You can't fool physics. Yes, this stuff can better remove heat from hot engine parts, but I don't think it will increase the efficiency of the radiators. Still, the metal-air process remains. And the more metal, the more contact with air and the more cooling. There is no additional substance in this equation.

This product sets off my BS alarm. I hear a lot of claims, but little substance. Their website is full of unverifiable claims and doesn't actually give any detail about what this 'graphene' is supposed to actually do to improve thermal conductivity when suspended in a fluid. Ultimately water/glycol is a very effective cooling medium and improving on it without a lot of extra cost is difficult - the limiting factor is likely to be the surface area of the radiator and the amount of air flowing through it, so unless you can fundamentally improve that, the fluid inside it isn't going to make all that much difference. If you need more cooling capacity, increase the fin density and surface area of the radiator or fit more powerful fans to it.

If solid graphene has such a high thermal conductivity, why use liquid coolant at all? You could attach a band of graphene to the engine on one end and let it radiate the heat on the other. Furthermore, liquid graphene won't work as a viable alternative because all automotive fluids have to be non-toxic enough in case they leak into the groundwater or storm drain.

So the LTT video you linked, initially the nano fluid was within margin of error between it and water (basically no difference while within a normal room where temps were not controlled ), they did manage to get a consistent drop in temps when it was in a temperature controlled area but it wasn't that much it needs a lot more work and testing, especially in areas where the ambient temperature is high.

Still got to remember the regulations regarding the space between the bonnet and the top of the engine for pedestrian saafety.

The equation about temperature and horsepower seems a bit stretched. Gain 10 hp with a 0.2°c drop in temperature? Hmmm

You guys went full adhd with today's thumbnail lol only thing missing is a giant red arrow/circle.

Never thought I'd see a Drivetribe video mentioning LTT!

@2:39, the radiator at the upside of the screen is not original ford T model radiator. It is a never version and the production method of this radiator is CAB (controlled atmosphere brazing) and aluminum welding. However the original copper and brass version is made by soldering copper fins to brass tubes. Also headers of the radiator also soldered.

Great video lads! The moment I clicked on this i was like I remember LTT made a video about this stuff a while back, it was great to see that the video in question was actually mentioned. It's amazing that the computer and automotive scenes overlap with each other. Looking forward to more content like this :)

Dude what is with that background music noise during the radiator design section, it’s torture

I can imagine Christine Horner having a hissy fit about this 🤣🤣🤣

Waterless coolants already exist (not graphene) and you can take off the radiator cap safely off a hot engine - it doesn't boil and transfers heat more efficiently than water BUT you can only use water in an F1 engine. Why ? Very simple - when a car crashes and spills coolant all over the road, they only allow water not to contaminate the road surface.

What about the extreme abrasion that will occur in the water pump!

Great to see people not giving up on the internal combustion engine just yet.

Make the heat exchanger out of grapheme.

Sounds like a promising technology. Hopefully they can pull it off and get it to market. There's lots to coolant that the average punter doesn't realise, and even small changes to the make-up can have knock-on consequences. An example is our preferred oil company was asked for a non glycol based coolant for our mining machinery to help prevent coolant fires [Glycol is flammable]. After several years of fighting cavitation issues, they came up with a blend that seemingly ticked all the boxes in relation to corrosion, anti boil and cavitation... Then we discovered that one particular brand of engine started failing engine oil heat exchangers. It was found that a solder use during manufacturing of the exchanger was reacting to the blend 😒 We're back with glycol again...

“Pre detonation” isn’t a thing. It’s a combination of 2 completely different ignition anomalies. Pre Ignition is spontaneous combustion before the spark plug fires. Detonation is a secondary combustion event inside the cylinder after the main ignition event. This causes competing flame fronts and a sudden and uncontrolled spike in cylinder pressure.

People have been banging on about the properties of graphene for ages. A useful, affordable graphene coolant is years away and will be really expensive. Imagine how much the environmentalists will kick off if you spill some! In the mean time, try Water Wetter.

"Innovation? BANNED" -Racing organizers

I always appreciated more traditional design instead of screaming ones. Saying that graphene in cooling liquid will completely change car designs is a complete baloney XD

No, you'd not get another 100bhp. As you increase the the power, by what ever means you employ to do so (timing, boost, ext..) the temperature of the engine increases. So, while you may see a 2 degree negative delta, that is only at baseline power. As you increase the power, the baseline temperature increases thereby reducing the deviation and further lowering the headroom for power increases.

Quite interesting. Thx for the Video

Would the graphene settle in radiators if the car is left unused for an extended time and would it choke the system if it happens along a narrow channel in the cooling system?

Banned by the FIA. So not illegal then 🙄

It's already available for open loop PC water cooling. It's effective in that application, but seen as a super expensive gimmick. It works well, but costs a lot and adds extra maintenance for something that can normally run forever with minimal maintenance. Car cooling systems are much less delicate though, there aren't tiny microfins to worry about clogging. This is definitely a far better application for the stuff.

But I mean for everything that needs cooling, may even improve efficiency and power in electric cars as well, even heavy machines. That's incredible, I have a car from 81 and it overheats on hot days, this may save me from doing a giant radiator on it. Awesome tech! Great video thanks!

I think Graphene batteries will change the automotive world before Graphene nano-fluid coolant.

I imagine there will be a lot of careful research into what these do when they are disposed of improperly... ...in about 50-60 years when any effects become prominent, like microplastics...

I imagine an air to water intercooler would benefit greatly from this.

Fascinating topic, thanx

I can't wait to try it in my stock 4dr civic.

im sure they could essentially turrn a current radiator around so to speak if they needed to, so it couldbe way fllatter but deeper allowing the shorter front profile. Of course we used to use just water for cooling not that long ago, im sure coolant was more than 50% more fficient than water so it isnt as tho we havent had this before :)

From a science standpoint this doesnt make sense. So lets assume you are pumping pure graphene yes more heat could be transfered to the graphene and more heat could be transfered from the graphene to the radiator but you would still need a big radiator because the cooling happens between the air and the radiator and graphene changes nothing in that department. Also the graphene needs to be suspended in a liquid which kinda acts like an insulator around the graphene Potentially it would wear down the coolant pump and could fall out of suspension if the car is sitting to long

Imagine using the graphene film for the radiator using the nano fluid with it you would have drastic changes for the better

A problem with graphene in coolant liquid can be deposits. In the end, graphene is solid. If it is deposited in the cooling channels, that is a big problem in long run! It needs extensive testing at high temperature and flow rate conditions.

As long as the heater still works well in winter I'm all in . 😊

Don't some people use quite a bit of water in the fuel of retrofitted engines? Low Energy Nuclear Reactions are starting to be published on in peer reviewed journals. One atom in, another out, and thermal dynamics can end up VERY different.

I’m glad all the scientists who watch Drive Tribe, have this product worked out faster than the company investing fortunes in it.

We’ve been using/ trialing graphiene in road surfacing for a little while now

Well, this gain in power can be applicable to race engines, not normal road cars that much. The only benefit would be less coolant pump power so better fuel economy. You can run your engine cooler but cooling the engine means more heat loss. Efficiency is basically an optimisation among heat losses, exhaust temperature and power output.

It also has the very real potential to allow for drivers to detune their engines a bit for the sake of improving not only reliability, but fuel economy as well.

Yes! Just what we need. Graphene released into the environment at every crash.

We have done a lot of research alongside universal matter on suspended graphene nanoplatelets. Graphene coolant is a nice idea, it wouldn’t be water based though as it is prone to agglomeration in water and this would clog the system.

BMW will still insist on the huge grilles though

glad I saved my comment towards the end... my comment was going to be about computer and more specifically CPU cooling as temperatures there fluctuate heavily but if you can cool a large cpu much more efficiently you can almost exponentially increase the power afforded to it... of course this may translate into only 10% gains but it is "free" if your cooler can handle it.

Also, area percentage is not as extreme as you might expect. 60% smaller radiator wouldn't shrink it by as much as imagined.

The coolant is only part of the solution because the coolant is reliant upon the distribution and the only component that has that job in a normal ICE is the water pump and if that pump is not up to spec then the distribution of the coolant regardless of it being water or nano glycol it needs to be distributed at a given rate. The given rate is 10 liters per minute at 500 rpm. Of course as the throttle is opened then too the distribution rate must increase to cope with the extra heat being created in the cylinder head . We have been doing this for about 30+ years and it works when you get it right regardless of the coolant.

Sounds like graphene could play a major part in internal coatings of engines for heat dispersal along with intercooler and could use nano fluids in a water to air intercooler and maybe they could add it to engine and transmission oil depending on its abrasive properties potentially as a surface enhancer and also help shead heat faster, do hope synthetic fuel saves the ICE and we get to see stuff like this and digital valve trains become mainstream if car manufacturers have more trust that ICE will be around for the foreseeable future

the thumbnail was something else hahaha

There were several things just glossed over in regards to F1 that give a skewed perspective on what actually is. First, the reason F1 has graphene coolant systems banned is for homologation reasons. They just simply haven't come up with rules for all teams to integrate graphene cooling into the cars. This is to ensure all teams have access and capability to develop it with their cars every season. Right now they're more focused on net 0 carbon footprint, and because they haven't finished the research and incorporation of low emission bio/synthetic fuels, adding in something else that directly interacts with the fuel changes they're working on would be a mess. Second is because it would be a waste currently due to the homologation rules. Even if they were to unban it, the requirements for the engines, minimum weight, size, etc... would mean teams couldn't really do much more than cool the engine more efficiently. Yes, they could reduce the sidepod size, but as Mercedes found out, you may not want to do that. Which brings us to the third thing. The reason the minimalistic sidepods didn't work for Mercedes wasn't anything to do with cooling. They've had about the same results as the other cars in that area. The reason they abandoned it was because of aerodynamics and the problems it was creating with ground effect (venturi tunnels). Basically this era of F1 cars that use ground effect have had better success with big sidepods that create a vortex over the side of the floor to seal the venturi tunnels.

im confused you still have the ac coil which is the same size of the radiator, also engines works better at higher temperatures if you want power, however the issue is the parts melt so we use water to protect and cool the metal parts. other issues is cost of the liquid and if it leaks how bad is it for the environment, im sorry the coolants today are amazing and worst case you can use water in an emergency, water is amazing and cheap way to cool a engine.

My first thought of watching this was when will the coolant come to PC water-cooling. Then I remembered Linus already got that lol.

Graphene is only one way to drop the temperature of an engine: You can also drop the temp of an engine by bonding a lubricant to the metal. :-)

Hmm. The thing with these nanoparticles is, we are already dealing with too many microplastics polluting our environment, this could make a coolant leak after an accident so much worse.

Wouldn't a better idea be to use the heat energy to charge batteries or even do similar with exhaust heat

So, how much is the engine negatively affected if a gasket compromise begins and this additive begins seeping into spaces not intended?

DRIVETRIBE have done a carwow by changing the thumbnail at least three times 😮

Nano scale stuff is very interesting but I'm concerned about the effects on the environment and biological effects.

Seen this in pcs and it works great. Will work for any cooling, The issue is ice engines are not being designed anymore due to evs. Unless other fuels come along it’s a dead end for engine design other than maybe racing. Tuning though No need for ethanol

This reminds me of the revolutionary coolant gm had. Except it wasn't all that great after it started breaking down and clogging everything

It would work in an electric car too. It could take heat from the motors and electronics and transfer the heat to the batteries to increase cold weather range.

This sounds like pipe dream. Carbon is going build up and block passages where coolants needs to go causing more problems.

What happen in the winter ? The engine never get to temp°.... or what ?

If they can make sure it works while retaining the anti-boil, anti-freeze and galvanic corrosion inhibitors, could we see a simple bolt on/pour in upgrade, allowing for stock motors to be tuned for more power without much more than an ECU, fuel pump and injector swap?

Love the thumbnail :) much better :) great vid.

Great vlog Now where's the v10

ICE's cooling is as important as sound quality of vinyl disk or cpacity of floppy drive.

Just imagine using this stuff for the intercooler for a supercharger or turbo.

Now I want someone to do a test by adding cheap graphen to antifreeze

I just saw a new beamer, all black and the grill was surrounded by LEDs. I hate to admit it looked awesome

With all the superior qualities of graphene, I’d have thought the projected improvement would be MUCH greater than just 60% to be honest.

The limit is the limits of how fast air can absorb that heat. Does not mater if the liquid can absorb and release heat so well. The radiator will have to go through a redesign, to be able to release that heat to the air more efficiently. A second issue comes so it being a certain viscosity because of the ratio of graphene to liquid. Too much one way and its a syrup, the other has no added effects. Something else too, if it was being used in solid form, such as graphene strips and sheets they can only transfer heat one direction, or dimension as that makes a bit more sense. So if its in a sheet, it is the best at transferring heat edge to edge. When its trying to transfer heat on the flat, writing, parts, its thermal conductivity is horrible. Atleast for current tech,

So you said that graphene is exceptionally strong. Why stop at fluids? If they can integrate it into the metals of the pistons, rings, cylinders, heads, and valves; then through the block and heads, theoretically you could go back to air cooling! Or even yet have the graphene coolant with it integrated into the metals and make absurd levels of power like a NHRA dragster, but doing it reliably!

Ffs Mike they haven't 'ran' tests they have RUN tests.

I think adding it to oil would be even more beneficial. Increased lubricity, which means you can reduce viscosity, and the added benefit of greater heat exchange. Take it a step further and coat the engine internals with graphene and you have yourself something. Almost zero surface wear on parts (which also reduces heat) and the ability to run higher compression, more fuel= more powahhh! [said in Clarkson’s voice]

Now that's exciting

That's really awesome!

this is all great, moving heat from engine. but the radiator needs to be size X to disapte heat X regardless where the heat comes from or how fast it's going to it. if anything might evenb need to be bigger to disapate all the exttra heat suddenly been dumped in it

I don't know for sure, but if this is sponsored content (or in a grey area), remember the UK is particularly brutal about untagged ads. If not, then carry on.

How would this work in a diesel and what’s is the life time of this fluid . And will u need a filter

would this work if it was added to evans waterless coolant

The problem with graphene is that it is abrasive. So while it will cool more efficiently, it will eat your engine from the inside.

there is always bas sides. what are the negative impact ?

How would it handle -40°C and would it be able to heat up the coupé?

Just make the heat exchangers out of the carbon material. Job done.

Im quite disappointed by this video - its quite misleading. The title is misleading - graphene is not illegal (though FIA has a rule that eliminates graphene from use in engines) and the science is not actually correct, and radiator size has littlte to no impact on car design. I'm quite disappointed that a channel of this prestige would be clickbaity

I can only imagine it clogging everything up

I dunno. This'll have to be reviewed by Jason Fenske over at Engineering Explained.

But the heat needs to be transferred from the cylinder walls to atmosphere. Between those there are cylinder block, hoses and the radiator and the coolant only transfers the heat forward. Radiator finally convects the heat to atmosphere and the liquid doesn't affect the efficiency of the radiator so much. It's still just aluminum

Yeah, but the results seen by LTT were not very significant. Though, as you say, a small change might help a lot in an engine, as it moves other thresholds.

will nanographene coolant be so efficient to lower the efficiency of the motor by pulling too much heat away? (assuming coolant system remains the same)

I have waterless coolant in both my 4.0 V8 AMG and my Land Rover, it works very well, I wonder why these guys have not gone down the waterless route with a graphene additive?

sounds abrasive

The hidden elephant in the room is, (what do those nanoparticles do to the environment?) Will they last forever?

A graphene based radiator and intercooler would likely be far more effective.