Federal Mogul introduces innovative pistons with coating to help reduce emissions and fuel consumption
When car enthusiasts talk about engine technologies, most of the time the piston is overlooked. It’s an undeniable fact though that a piston is a vital component of gasoline powerplants. Federal Mogul, a known supplier of technologies to improve the efficiency of powertrains, developed a piston called EcoTough.
EcoTough is a coated piston designed to have low friction and low wear properties. It also helps in reducing carbon dioxide emission and increase fuel efficiency by 0.8%. The newly developed piston is compatible with existing designs of engines in volume production today.
Federal Mogul has not revealed the specific components of the coat that they use for the piston but insiders hint that it contains carbon fiber, molybdenum disulfide, and graphite.
During test runs in laboratories, the EcoTough piston resulted to an 18% decrease in friction loss and about 3% increase in parasitic loss of the engine.
Other benchmark tests revealed a fuel efficiency increase between 0.4 and 0.8%. The coated pistons also demonstrated decreased signs of wear after being subjected to 50 cycles of cold starts and after resistance testing with full load.
The EcoTough pistons are on production and will be introduced to complete the volume production vehicle of a major European car brand
Federal Mogul is headquartered in Michigan and currently has a workforce of 43,000 to meet the demand for safety and powertrain technologies.