PM motor upgrade accelerates savings for scientists

摘要

An important scientific research centre near Oxford is saving a significant amount of energy after fitting three direct-drive permanent magnet motor systems to cooling towers on the site. Every year, thousands of scientists use the ISIS pulsed neutron and muon source, located at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, near Oxford, to carry out cutting-edge research. Three cooling towers form part of the accelerator's primary water-based cooling system. Previously, the fans in the cooling towers of the facility's proton accelerator were run at full speed using a conventional drive system, consisting of a fixed-speed AC induction motor connected by a drive shaft and disc coupling into a right-angle gearbox. This reduced the motor's speed to that required by the fan - typically around 6:1.