With the growing awareness of energy efficiency, the Indian Air Handling Unit (AHU) market has adopted a higher efficiency range of fans. We also see growing use of Variable Frequency Drives (VFD) to adjust the speed of the fan as per load requirements, leading to substantial energy savings. However, we continue to see predominant use of belt-driven fans, even when fans are coupled with VFD. Thus, we continue to compromise on belt losses along with maintenance issues related to them. The objective of moving to the direct drive fan technology is to improve system efficiency. However, if we end up selecting a low-efficiency fan, the purpose gets defeated. Thus, it is necessary to first select the most efficient fan for the application. This article summarises detailed performance analysis of various direct drive AC and EC fans over a wide range of applications, and highlights the benefits of each type of fan.
Certain sectors and industries have realised the energy savings opportunity and have moved to direct drive fans. However, the users have primarily looked at direct drive Single Inlet Single Width (SISW) no-scroll plug fans as the choice that offers a compact solution, but operates at high efficiency in a very small range of applications. Beyond this, the plug fan performance is generally far inferior to Double Inlet Double Width (DIDW) centrifugal scroll fans. The purpose of moving to direct drive fan technology is to improve system efficiency; however, if we end up selecting a low efficiency fan, the purpose gets defeated. Thus, it is of utmost importance first to select the most efficient fan for the application. Not everyone is aware that every range of a fan can be made direct driven and the entire range of far more efficient DIDW centrifugal fans is available in direct drive version, including forward curved, backward inclined and backward aerofoil. We shall look at the following direct drive AC fans, encompassing a majority of today’s air handler’s fan applications. Table 1 gives the comparison.
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