TOWER Engineering says it is now using Baldor’s RPM AC Direct Drive Cooling Tower Motor and VS1 cooling tower drive in its cooling towers.
Tower Engineering designs and installs cooling towers for the large institutional market. These facilities use air conditioning systems which require a cooling tower to exchange heat and return cooled water back to the chiller.
The towers work by using large high inertia fans to pull air over a water-soaked media in order to cool it.
The most common method for driving the fan in modern cooling towers has been a right-angle gear reducer, drive shaft and disc coupling arrangement, along with a standard foot mounted AC motor.
Tower Engineering wanted to eliminate gearboxes and other moving parts, due to problems with misalignment, excessive vibration and noise. These, along with heat generation and consumables like seals and bearings, meant they required high levels of maintenance.
The company relayed its needs to Baldor, and the manufacturer started developing a direct drive fan motor. This resulted in the Reliance RPM AC Cooling Tower Drive Motor, with a laminated steel, finned-frame construction.
According to Baldor, the Permanent Magnet Rotor design using highflux magnets allows the motor to be manufactured in a compact form, similar in size to the gearbox it replaces.
Tower Engineering says by trading all the components of a gearbox for one moving part, the drive motor eliminates a lot of maintenance issues, and is also more efficient. Test results indicate a 13% edge in efficiency over conventional drive trains.
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