End of March 2012, KSB Aktiengesellschaft will start the series production of its high-efficiency SuPremE electric motor series at the company’s factory in Halle on the river Saale, Germany.
In contrast to conventional synchronous motors, the German pump manufacturer’s motor does not contain any magnetic materials, such as rare earths, which are regarded critical raw materials and which cannot be mined without considerable environmental impact in the countries of origin.
Since the new drives no longer need failure-prone rotor position sensors, they are as robust and reliable as speed-controlled asynchronous motors.
The new synchronous reluctance motors provide users with a technology that is ideally suited to also fulfill the future requirements energy-efficient drives of pumps will have to meet.
They have at least 15% less power dissipation than that prescribed by Regulation EC 640/2009 for efficiency class IE3 from 2015 or 2017, depending on the motor rating. This means that the motors reach efficiency level IE4 as per IEC/CD 60034-30 Ed. 2 already today.
In contrast to asynchronous motors, synchronous reluctance motors still have a good efficiency when they are not run at full load. This is very often the case in day-to-day operation practice where many motors operated in speed-controlled applications mainly run at reduced speed.
