Under pressure

One of the key building blocks for good-performing, clean, and efficient engines is precise, high-pressure fuel injection. Recent advances in diesel systems by top suppliers are helping OEMs meet increasing market demands.

Modern automobile engine designers are faced with ever increasing performance, fuel consumption, and exhaust-gas and noise emissions demands. Increasingly, automakers have been turning to diesels to satisfy market requirements, especially in Europe. Though they have improved fuel economy and thus emit less CO₂, a key environmental challenge for diesel engines is the need for reduced emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and particulate matter (PM). Modern demands have resulted in development of high-performance fuel-injection systems with higher injection pressure that better atomize fuel and precisely control injection timing and quantity.

Direct injection is the route most automakers are going to improve the performance of future engines. The technology has been pioneered with diesels, primarily because modern direct-injection diesel engines can be up to 40% more efficient than conventional indirect-injection gasoline engines, providing an equivalent improvement in fuel economy and a similar reduction in the emissions of carbon dioxide.