240watt Eco Blue DC pumps

The Codfather · #1 03-09-2012, 01:56 PM

Mike,
I have requested a pump curve chart as well as a more detail tech. spec.
I am a plumber by trade, not a sparky so the aspect of sine wave tech means little to me, my appoligies. I can only assume it has something to do with the inverter, but this is not my area of expertise. I have however relayed the question on to them, I will post what responce I receive.
I am trying to get the information in writing on the 110v and 220v version, I know that both are available as I am ordering both models. I will have both 110v and 220v wired to my aquarium and will test both pumps side by each.
I will be running the 220v on my system, a friend of mine has ordered the 110v version. I asked him if I could compre the unit before he takes the pump, just to see if there is any differences. Which I am sure there will be, but only in the power consumtion.
As for the pricing, I know it seems high. To be completely honest, I see this as my main return pumps with controlability. I do not have to buy power heads such as the ecotech or tunze to acheive waves or random flow patterns as it can be done with the pumps controller(both the basic or the advanced controller), or with the 1-10v interface.

The Codfather · #2 03-09-2012, 02:09 PM

Ive also been asked what I get out of all this, why am I trying to promote these pumps? The simple answer to the promotion is this, the cost of the pumps may go down a little bit more. But I am paying the same price as you would, I am not receiving any free product or getting any monetary gain. I am interested in what these pumps can bring to my system and they are the cheapest of the ones I have found, believe it or not.
If anything, sit back and read the thread as it progresses, I will post anything I find with the install and proformance of the pumps. I know the promise of a all powerful DC pump has been brought to the market before and failed miserably. Im doing this because, I suppose I can(and its a pump I want) and I find it hard to believe that a pump like this is not in our market. If anything, it will bring a bit of new info into our forum.

mike31154 · #3 03-09-2012, 03:11 PM

Always cool to see someone such as yourself trying a new product & a controllable return pump is certainly an option many of us could use! Once something like this gets rolling, often other manufacturers will look to get in on the game provided patents don't stifle competition too much.

Good to hear that you'll be getting some more specs on the unit, particularly the head loss curve. As far as the electrical part of it, seems many products have a lot of technobabble on their web pages to impress & confuse folks in an effort to persuade them that their product is somehow exclusive.

Panworld has been producing DC voltage pumps for some time, but there is no controller, you simply feed the rated DC voltage directly to the pump, same as a standard AC voltage pump. Thing is, our homes are fed 60Hz AC voltage, so to run any DC pump, you need a rectifier to produce the DC voltage. With a heavy duty variable resistor, you could make a simple manual control for any DC driven pump, much like a conventional dimmer. It would take a few more parts & circuits to make this automatic & that's generally where the high cost comes in.

Here's my best guess as to why they talk about pure sine wave with respect to this pump. Looking at the Controller circuit diagram on page 12 of the User Manual, I suspect that the motor itself is a 3 phase AC motor & the only thing DC about it is the Controller itself. The Contoller is fed household 60Hz, 2 phase AC voltage which it rectifies to DC. This DC voltage is then fed to the Control Circuit which actually produces a 3 phase AC or PWM signal. The PWM signal is then fed to the 3 phase Inverter Bridge & finally to the AC motor. This is probably why they talk of the pure sine wave. As I mentioned earlier, the motor itself is actually a 3 phase AC motor being fed a controllable, pure sine wave AC signal from the motor Controller!

Hope this is not too confusing & somewhat informative, I tried to keep it relatively simple and of course it's just my best guess as to how it works based on the block diagram. Bottom line I think is, the relatively high cost of this pump can be attributed to the Controller.

Looking forward to hearing a bit more once you get your hands on these.

The Codfather · #4 03-09-2012, 03:26 PM

Mike,
Thanks for the input, this is part of the reason I wanted to post here. There is a pile of information that can be aquired based on one's profession, any information is apprieciated.
I know the pumps themselves, regardless of if they are 110v or 220v are the exact same pump. The difference is the controller that comes with them. So what your saying does make sense.

mike31154 · #5 03-09-2012, 03:38 PM

Found some additional info on another web site, specifically max head pressure for each model:

Model MaxFlow(gph) MaxWattage Maxhead(metres) Price

BlueEco240 4840 240 9 689.95

BlueEco320 4840 320 11 795.00

BlueEco500 7000 500 11 1175.00

BlueEco900 7700 900 13 1395.00

BlueEco1500 9240 1500 16 1495.00

9 meters of max head for the 240 is pretty huge, that's > 30 ft.

Info is a way down on the following web page. Took a while to load, not sure what's up with that.

http://www.koicarp.org.uk/koi_dry_goods_water.htm

The Codfather · #6 03-13-2012, 03:25 AM

Mike,
I pulled this out of the email they sent:

"the power module uses true sine wave technology for high reliability. Unlike brushless DC motors with square wave technique"

Don't quite know what that means as I'm a plumber not an electrician. Care to shed some light on this?

Pumps curves are hopefully coming soon.
Thanks,
Bob

subman · #7 03-13-2012, 03:54 AM

cheaper inverters make a squared off sine wave, basically instead of a nice curved wave its clipped at the top. The better the inverter the closer to a true sine wave it is.

subman · #8 03-13-2012, 03:56 AM

http://www.bdbatteries.com/images/sinevsmod.jpg

mike31154 · #9 03-13-2012, 04:12 AM

Generally it's AC motors that are negatively affected by a square wave power signal. They run very inefficiently if at all with anything but a pure sine wave. This is why it's not a good idea to run your AC powerheads on a backup system with a cheaper square wave producing inverter.

Without additional details on the design specifics of this 'DC' motor, it's tough to explain why they're talking about sine wave technology, since generally a DC motor runs on DC, that is Direct Current, not Alternating. I mentioned earlier that I suspect it may really be an AC motor since they appear to be feeding it a 3 phase Alternating Current signal from the controller. It is quite possible that the motor is indeed a DC motor & the frequency of the 3 phase AC signal is so high that the motor sees it as DC. Kind of like feeding an LED, which is also a DC device, a high frequency AC or PWM signal. The LED turns on & off at such a speed, that we don't perceive a flicker at all, yet since it is turned off for a nano second, there is some power savings realized over time. Confused yet? I sure as H am. I need to do a little research on running a DC motor with an Alternating Current or PWM signal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation