ITT Lowara Scoops UK Pump Industry 2009 Energy Saving Award
A small solar circulating pump has scooped another big award for its energy saving credentials. ITT Lowara’s Ecocirc D5solar circulator came top in the Pump Industry Awards 2009 in the prestigious Environmental/Energy Saving category.
ITT Lowara
The Ecocirc D5solar pump is specially designed for pumping the water/glycol mixture in solar circuits supporting the heating of the domestic hot water and all this is done without running energy costs or emissions.
The circulator has found a perfect home in domestic solar powered systems, where it is driven by a direct connection to a small 10-30V photovoltaic module.
“The Ecocirc range of spherical motor pumps and central heating systems has seen excellent growth across Europe,” commented ITT Lowara’s UK general manager Duncan Lewis. “We are extremely proud of our success in the Pump Industry Awards 2009, which follows similar success in several other awards in the HVAC marketplace.”
The Pump Industry Award recognised the circulator’s “significant contribution to environmental issues”. And efficiency is the by-word of the entire range of Ecocirc domestic circulators, which share a common theme: a high efficient, electronic commutated, spherical motor with just one moving part. A hemispherical rotor/impeller unit sits on an ultra-hard, wear-resistant ceramic ball with no conventional shaft bearings or seals for low maintenance and blockage-free operation.
The Ecocirc D5solar circulator itself includes self-optimising software that modifies the pump’s operating point on the voltage-current curve of the photovoltaic panel. This determines the point of maximum performance (MPP-Tracking). By this the pump will still work, even when there is little sunlight available. With strong sunlight available the pump is adapting to larger flowrates by changing its inner resistance automatically, which is what a solar system requires to get maximum efficiency. In a nutshell: Low sunlight, low flow (= low pump speed), strong sunlight, high flow (= high pump speed). A perfect match! All done automatically by the pump.
It also has a soft-start built in, with less than 1W of power used when starting up.
For battery driven systems, the MPP-tracking of the D5solar is not required. For those systems choose the Ecocirc vario, which is exactly the same pump, just with MPP tracking removed.
Source: Xylem Inc.
