Cubewano halves fuel consumption in its engines

Cubewano will reveal dramatically reduced fuel consumption figures in its lightweight heavy fuel rotary engines at AUVSI's Unmanned Systems North America 2011.

The British engine maker, which is exhibiting on stand 1715 at the show, has developed a new injection system which has as reduced specific fuel consumption (SFC) from 1.1lb/hp/hr at cruise to below 0.6lb/hp/hr across the entire workable throttle range.

Craig Fletcher, founder and CEO of Cubewano, said: "Rotary engines are not typically known for their fuel efficiency, so after conquering the challenge of producing a high power to weight ratio rotary engine which would run on heavy fuel we turned our attention to reducing fuel consumption.

"Our new injection system, which currently has a patent pending, has dramatically reduced SFC at full and part throttle – offering efficient power generation from our exceptionally lightweight engines."

Cubewano, based near Birmingham in the United Kingdom, designs, develops, tests and manufactures small, high quality internal combustion engines. Its engines were perfected as part of the U.S. Army's Class 1 increment 2 programme to develop the next generation of unmanned air vehicles.

The company's range of rotary Wankel engines is designed to be light, quiet with very low vibration, running on multiple fuels including heavy fuel (JP8).

All Cubewano engines are fuel injected with electronic engine management to maximise power, fuel efficiency, reliability and emissions requirements. All engines are developed with field requirements in mind.

Cubewano has developed, manufactured and tested engines with power ranging from 3hp to 16hp in both air and liquid cooled variants.