- Providing enough fuel for a very high power race engine is obviously challenging.
And we've probably all seen cars equipped with fuel systems consisting of multiple
fuel pumps mounted in surge tanks and fuel tanks making sure that the engine
has sufficient fuel to remain safe and reliable under high power operation.
Now the problem with this is when you are faced with multiple pumps,
it provides complexity both in the installation as well as the ability for more parts to
go wrong.
Basically we're opening ourselves up for more potential areas for failure.
Now a technology that certainly isn't new but one that we've been seeing
emerge over the last few years is the use of brushless fuel pumps.
Now there's still only a handful of manufacturers supplying brushless
fuel pumps and controllers out there on the market but the technology
really is impressive, particularly with the capability of these pumps.
The pump that most people are using is generally referred to as the Veyron pump
but the pump itself is not the tricky bit.
In order to use a brushless fuel pump, this requires a specialised controller,
and that controller is utilised to control the fuel pump speed.
Now the advantages of the brushless pump compared to a conventional
fuel pump is that with a conventional fuel pump, as we increase the fuel
pressure we tend to see the flow out of the pump drop away.
And ultimately this is exactly what we don't want to happen.
Particularly if we're considering a high boost turbocharged or
supercharged engine.
As the boost pressure increases we need to also increase the fuel
pressure to maintain a consistent differential pressure across the fuel
injectors.
Now of course as we increase the boost pressure the pump finds it harder
and harder to flow fuel and we see that fuel flow drop away and if it
gets to a point where the fuel flow drops too far, we consequently see
the fuel pressure drop.
On a brushless pump on the other hand, the controller has feedback for the
actual pump speed.
And this is what the controller is doing.
It's controlling that fuel pump speed and maintaining a fixed speed.
What this means is that within the bounds of the pump's capability
we're actually going to see a consistent fuel pump supply, fuel volume supply,
regardless of the pressure that we're putting on that fuel system.
Now in the case of the pump that we've got behind me developed by
Injector Dynamics, this single Veyron pump is capable of supplying an insane
1100 litres of fuel flow per hour at 110 psi.
So to give you some numbers around that, on pump fuel this would equate
to somewhere in the region of about 3400 horsepower of fuel flow capability.
If you're running E85 this drops to around about 2200 horsepower.
Just to remind you, that is from one single fuel pump.
So this is something that we're definitely going to see making its way into a lot
of high end turbocharged and supercharged cars over the coming years as these
systems become more and more available.
Now while this system has the ability to flow up to 1100 litres per hour,
of course we're not always going to need that amount of fuel,
and if you're running this pump as hard as it's capable of running,
and you're not using that fuel, what it means is that you're circulating
a lot of fuel unnecessarily through the fuel system and what this does is it
adds heat to your fuel.
Now with the Injector Dynamics fuel pump controller, this also has the
ability to take input from an ECU and basically what we can do is control
the input of the fuel pump as the engine's fuel demands increase.
What we can do essentially is run the pump at low speed at idle and cruise
where we don't really use much fuel, and then as the boost and RPM
increases we can drive the pump harder and harder.
It is also important to note that when we've got this pump on maximum
kill producing 1100 litres of fuel flow per hour, at 110 psi,
it is drawing a very large amount of current.
Somewhere in the region of 70 to 80 amps.
While it's unlikely that a brushless pump and controller is going to be a cheap
option for your fuel system, when you compare this to potentially three, four
or five separate pumps along with installation and wiring of those pumps,
and the reliability problems that come along with this, it does look like a very
attractive option for a high performance high power engine.
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