Tarrytown, NY — Businesswire reported that Hitachi America, Ltd ., Power and Industrial Division, has debuted its new Ecoheart family of high-efficiency, permanent-magnet motors and drives. Ecoheart is targeted at OEMs, allowing the creation of customized drive systems.
Compared with standard induction motors, Ecoheart’s permanent-magnet technology is said to achieve 10% higher efficiency since internal power loss is 50% lower. Also, the motor is smaller: 50% by volume and 35% by weight, due to high performance magnets and a new stator winding. Employing a sinusoidal motor-current waveform—instead of the trapezoidal waveform typical of permanent magnet motors—Ecoheart has low: torque ripple, vibration, acoustic noise, and harmonics.
With no standard form factor, Ecoheart drives can be unique to the OEM. Current units’ performance is optimized for water pump applications and will be expanded to others including, fans, compressors, conveyors and such—where downsizing and more energy savings are desired.
— Richard Phelps , senior editor, Control Engineering
