Ford today revealed plans for the production of a new 1.8-litre Duratec SCi engine featuring direct petrol injection for improved fuel economy and lower emissions.
Named for its Smart Charge injection system, the new Ford Duratec SCi engine promises reductions in fuel consumption of between 6 and 8 per cent in real-world driving.
The all-aluminium engine is derived from Ford’s Duratec family of in-line four-cylinder petrol engines that power the Ford Mondeo.
Direct-injection petrol engines have especially low consumption levels during lean-burn operation, such as occurs in idling or moderate acceleration, when only a part of the combustion chamber is filled with gas-air mixture. Ford engineers, working to extend this benefit over a broader range of loads and engine speeds, developed the engine’s SCi (Smart Charge injection) technology.
Prof Dr Rudolf J Menne, Ford of Europe’s director of engineering for petrol engine development explained: "Normal petrol engines are more powerful than they need to be for operating at typical real-world driving conditions. Under these load and speed conditions, the engine uses a large proportion of fuel to overcome air resistance in the intake manifold caused by the load control via closing the intake throttle. The engine has to breathe against low pressures in the intake manifold, which causes pumping losses to go up and fuel consumption to increase."
The SCi system places a small, combustible gas-air charge in the combustion chamber so that it is situated near the spark plug at the point of ignition circumventing airflow problems.
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