The benefits of these motors provide the flexibility needed for challenging pump applications.
In the early 1920s, California’s agricultural industry was booming. As the demand for the Golden State’s homegrown products increased, growers had to expand their operations, which in turn meant an increased demand for the state’s most valuable resource—water.
The climate of Central and Southern California is ideal for agriculture. The only ingredient missing is rain. California’s rainfall is seasonal—dry during the hot summer months and wet for only a few winter months. The water in reservoirs, lakes and rivers was not sufficient to meet the drinking water demand, much less an added irrigation demand.
Horizontal Pumps & Motors
One solution was to tap the groundwater supply. To do so required above-ground, horizontal pumps with right-angle gear configurations. They were powered by internal combustion engines. Many of the pumps were ditch pumps that only sent the water a short distance.
The system worked, but end users became increasingly frustrated with efficiency issues and the higher costs associated with equipment losses. For instance, the ditch pumps’ bearings failed quickly because of the downward pull on the shaft. The farmers voiced those frustrations to pump manufacturers, who in turn looked to motor manufacturers for help.
Vertical Motors
The solution came in 1922 when engineers from U.S. Electrical Motors—a small Los Angeles-based motor company—developed the first vertical pump motor. The motor revolutionized the pumping industry and made irrigating large areas of cropland possible. This innovation helped make California the nation’s top farming state, despite its limited water resources.
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| Vertical hollow shaft motors operating in the Metro Irrigation Efficiency Program project in Denver, Colo. |
Putting an electric motor on top of a pump solved three critical issues facing customers: convenience, costs and reliability.
Convenience
By marrying a vertical motor with a vertical pump, the need for the mechanical gearbox, which provides the torque for a horizontal motor, is eliminated. Less equipment means easier installation and more space. Another added benefit is that a vertical motor makes the alignment of the motor shafts with the driven equipment much easier, which means less vibration.
Cost
In addition to the cost savings from fewer parts, vertical pump motors operate more efficiently—as much as 30 percent higher—than horizontal motors, because the gear box is eliminated. Vertical motors also handle more pump thrust, which eliminates the need for external thrust bearings.
Reliability
Because vertical motors are specifically designed for the pump application, they deliver better durability and reliability than their horizontal counterparts, which of course leads to greater peace of mind for the customer.
Solid Versus Hollow Shaft Motors
Vertical motors are specifically designed to drive vertical turbine pumps. There are two types of vertical pump motors—solid shaft and hollow shaft. The solid shaft is coupled to the pump shaft by an externally-mounted coupling. Hollow shaft motors allow the pump head shaft to extend through the motor shaft and connect to an integrally-mounted drive coupling.
The advantage goes to hollow shaft motors:
- Ease of impeller adjustment
- Access at the top of the motor
- The coupling is one part with a gib key
- Pump adjusting nut supplied by the pump supplier
- Fewer parts
- No adjustable coupling required
- Less cost
- Lower profile
- No adjustable coupling required in discharge head
- Less susceptible to reed critical/vibration problems
All induction motors are specified by horsepower, speed, enclosure, input power, frame size and mounting. However, vertical motors require additional information:
- Thrust requirements
- Solid shaft (VSS) or hollow shaft (VHS)
- VHS coupling type and bore requirements
- Is a non-reverse ratchet required?
Thrust
The magnitude and direction of the thrust are determined by the pump and the dynamics of the liquid flow. Even when a system is designed for thrust in one direction, transient conditions will sometimes temporarily change the thrust direction. Thrust is then defined as either up thrust or down thrust.
The motor’s thrust capability must exceed the sum of the axial forces from the weight of its rotor, the pump line shaft and impeller plus the dynamic forces required to lift the liquid to the surface.
- Normal thrust motor—Normal thrust motors are used in general applications in which no or very low external thrust is applied to the motor bearing. This type motor is often a footless horizontal motor with a P-flange and drip cover.
- Medium thrust motor—Usually called an in-line pump motor, this is a definite purpose motor. The pump impellers are mounted directly on the motor shaft. Since the pump impeller performance depends on close tolerance with the pump housing, the motor shaft and flange run-out tolerances must also be tighter than normal. The thrust bearing is usually located at the bottom so that the motor rotor’s thermal growth does not affect the impeller clearances.
- High thrust motor—Each manufacturer will define its product offering. Common thrusts are 100 percent, 175 percent and 300 percent. Usually, these motors are available in solid shaft and hollow shaft versions. The thrust bearing is usually located in the upper end.
Mechanical Differences
Vertical motors are electrically similar to horizontal motors but are mechanically different because of the unique cooling requirements. Generally, enclosures are designed to handle a wider range of environmental conditions than those designed for horizontal motors. Where footless requirements are needed, vertical motors are commonly used because of the many application advantages to the driven equipment.
Today, vertical motors have a wide variety of applications including:
- Turbine pumps—used for municipal and industrial water supplies, processing and circulating water applications. They vary in output capacity from 10 to more than 25,000 gallons per minute.
- Axial flow pumps—are often used to supply water for municipalities, for cooling and irrigation purposes and for pumping out ponds or areas having excess amounts of water.
- Mixed flow pumps—used with cooling water circulation, storm and drainage sewers, irrigation projects and municipal aqueduct or canal pumping.
- Propeller pumps—found in effluent pumping, flood control and reclamation.
Aqueduct Project
An example of how the vertical pump motor continues to help California fight the water war is the Delta-Mendota Canal/California Aqueduct Intertie project. Nearly completed, the intertie, or short canal, is a 500-foot underground canal and pumping station that will move water from the state-controlled California Aqueduct to the federally controlled Delta-Mendota Canal. The linking of these two canals is expected to improve water supply reliability in a part of California hardest hit by dry conditions.
The canals are linked via two 108-inch-diameter pipes with a pumping capacity of 467 cubic feet per second (900 cubic feet per second gravity flow from the California Aqueduct to the Delta-Mendota Canal). Making this possible are four, 1,000-horsepower vertical, hollow shaft motors.
