HARTECH DEVELOPS ECO-POWER TECHNOLOGY FOR ICE ENGINES
Bolton-based Porsche engine remanufacturing specialist, Hartech, recently announced the development of emissions-reducing technology it plans to introduce to its core product line-up in the coming months. Sitting alongside the company’s M96/M97 rebuilds and celebrated oversized flat-six offerings, Hartech’s Eco-power engines promise to bring a serious drop in emissions, alongside improved fuel economy and a significant hike in performance.
A consequence of exploiting power and torque findings company founder, Baz Hart, discovered while dyno-testing two-stroke racing engines forty-five years ago, owners of Hartech’s oversized six-cylinder water-cooled Porsche engines have reported not only improved performance and drivability, but also close to ten percent better fuel economy, therefore carrying at least a ten percent reduction in emissions, making Hartech’s engines more environmentally sound and delivering reduced fuel costs to the end user. “The force pushing down on the piston comes from how much energy is released from the fuel in the cylinder, how well it mixes with air, how much air is in there and how high the pressure it is therefore compressed to,” Hart explained. “In other words, anything increasing performance also has the capacity to improve fuel efficiency. As long as you allow for the stroke being calculated to the point of ignition, valve overlap losses or gains, the compression pressure before ignition is roughly close enough to ensure that even if you have compression ratio high at low revs and part throttle openings [a scenario where volumetric efficiency is low], the resulting compression pressure at the point of ignition is low. The exponential curve of fuel efficiency falls away dramatically at lower revs and compression ratios, but, pleasingly, Hartech’s capacity-increased Porsche engines have improved volumetric efficiency at lower revs and hence improved fuel economy, which automatically reduces emissions by at least the same proportion. It is this feature of our oversized M96/M97 builds which forms the starting point for Hartech’s new Eco-power technology.”
The firm’s Eco-power development flat-six improves low and midrange fuel efficiency and power to an even greater extent, but the challenge is to prevent knock (detonation) when driving flat-out. It is this area Hart’s invention (patent pending) has covered. “Having already received reports of ten percent improvement in fuel economy with our range of oversized Porsche engines, I expect to significantly better that figure with even greater performance gains. I’m also excited to say our Eco-power technology could be applied to all remanufactured engines, as well as new internal combustion units from OEMS,” he told us. We’ll examine the detail in our next issue.