Increase of Energy Efficiency in Pump Electric Drive

Abstract

Typical low efficiency drives are pumps, fans and blowers that have a centrifugal torque characteristic T=f(n^2). In these electric drives there is great technical and economic potential for significant energy savings. Pumps are the most numerous working machines, therefore the electric drives with pump will be considered in this paper. First a brief introduction to pump systems will be given and then the ways in which the operating point of the pump can be regulated will be also presented. For the purpose of this investigation, a program was developed in the MATLAB software package for the calculation of energy savings and with its help a comparison between conventional ways of regulating the operating point of the pump and regulation of the operating point through variable electric drive speed was realized. Using this program, the electricity consumption of low, medium and high power pumps driven by induction motors that have the ability to regulate the rotation speed through an inverter with U/f regulation will be analyzed.