Dayco's vacuum pump keeps it simple

A hubbub of excitement has gripped Dayco Products this year. The supplier has hit on a product that it believes will not only supercharge its own business but revolutionize how vehicles will operate in an era of increased electrification and intensified lightweighting.

Dayco calls the technology ACTIVAC. And unlike the parade of future-generation technologies appearing around the industry, the component uses a profoundly low-tech approach to deliver a better mousetrap.

ACTIVAC is a vacuum-generation system that uses basic physics to eliminate the need for heavier, more expensive pumps. The technology's arrival on the market was hardly a shy affair. After years of development, the pump debuted last fall on the brake system for the 2017 Ford F-150. The F series is the best-selling vehicle in the U.S. But according to Dayco, brake systems are just the opening act. ACTIVAC can essentially replace any mechanical or electrical vacuum pump by rerouting the air that flows naturally into the engine.

Dayco anticipates the technology will represent 20 percent of its global automotive business in the near future, according to executives.

The product uses a principle known as the Venturi effect, an observation of fluid dynamics that has been understood for two centuries. It is the effect of creating a reduction in air or fluid pressure by forcing it through a constricted section of a pipe, or choke, to produce a vacuum.

The breakthrough was discovering how to apply the concept to mass-produced vehicles to address the push for weight reduction and the engineering desire to limit how much engine — or electric battery — power is drained away to run component systems.

"It's as close to no-compromise as you can get," said Paul DiLisio, Dayco's vice president of global program and product management. "It can result in lower systems cost, better fuel economy and better braking performance."

When compared with a mechanical vacuum pump, the ACTIVAC system, at 1.82 pounds, reduces weight up to 6.2 pounds. It also improves fuel economy by an estimated 0.3 percent.

Compared with an electrical pump, the system reduces weight by approximately 5 pounds and results in a significant cost savings per vehicle.

In the F-150, ACTIVAC was used on pickups equipped with the second-generation 3.5-liter V-6 EcoBoost engine. The pickup previously used a mechanical vacuum pump.

"What's remarkable about this story is — this is new technology for us. It's new tech for them, and what do they do? They put it on the flagship model," DiLisio said. "You talk about an endorsement of the technology. For us, it was pretty exciting."

Ford Motor Co., which partnered with Dayco and holds some patents on the actuator technology, was interested in the system because it is lighter than existing vacuum-generation technologies and created no additional parasitic loss for the engine.

"It's able to adjust, and it's electronically controlled," said Jiyan Cadiz, a Ford spokesman. "It's a win-win."

Dayco, a privately held company known for producing automotive dampers, belts and pulleys, has six projects on its books outside the current F-150 that will use the ACTIVAC system through the 2022 model year, according to DiLisio.

"This is probably one of our highest-growth product lines right now," he said. "It's high-potential."

The second vehicle with ACTIVAC will be released this summer, also on a brake system. Officials say future projects will expand to other manufacturers, other types of engines and other vehicle systems. The company intends to put the technology to use in fuel vapor purging, crankcase ventilation, turbocharger compressor and recirculation valve control.

Dayco expects to reach annualized production of 500,000 ACTIVACs by the end of the year from a roughly 100,000-square-foot facility in Arkansas. The company declined to disclose the unit price, expected revenue or how much it invested into ACTIVAC development and production.

Dayco particularly sees a market for ACTIVAC for smaller turbocharged engines, which produce less vacuum than larger natural aspirated engines and require mechanical and electrical pumps to run auxiliary systems in the vehicle.

Dayco has more than a handful of pending patents and six granted patents for ACTIVAC, including the de- sign of its venturi​ tube that features an elliptical throat and hyperbolic wall principles.

"How you go about the constriction is what makes it unique," said Jim Miller, Dayco's director of valve and actuator technologies, who has been with the product since its inception. "There are lots of different venturi designs out there."

The ACTIVAC system was six years in the making, but the initial product that caught Ford's attention for the F-150 didn't make it to final production. It was simply an actuator.

"What we had at the time ... was a pneumatic actuator," Miller said. Dayco had begun developing actuators in 2011.

Miller, who was put in charge of the project, described it as a restart for the company's advanced engineering group.

After a year of development, the company was experiencing the most success with valve and actuator technologies — an area it had never developed previously. From those early encouraging results, the full ACTIVAC system gradually emerged.

"We've had an advanced engineering group in the past, but honestly, nothing ever made it to market," Miller said. "So when I was put in charge of the advanced engineering group in 2011, it was a personal goal of mine not to repeat that."

The company received a 2017 Automotive News PACE Award for ACTIVAC. PACE Awards are given to companies that make product and process innovations that reach commercial application in the auto industry.