Development of spar engineering's next generation variable frequency drives

近年来，由于在实现节能运行方面所提供的经济优势，变频驱动(VFD)装置得到了广泛的使用。因此，VFD是许多工业应用中不可或缺的部件，例如泵、压缩机、冷冻机、风扇、鼓风机、破碎机和传送带。支持组织SPAR Engineering在采矿、公用事业、石油和天然气、纸浆和造纸、能源和水/废物管理等不同行业的电气、控制和自动化领域提供咨询和设计工程服务。该公司在他们的项目中建造并使用了专有的VFD设计，该设计已有10多年的历史。随着新的微控制器和新出现的VFD控制方法的出现，该公司正在改进以前的设计并提供下一代VFD。所要求的资金是为了使SFU的研究人员能够与该公司密切合作，开发其下一代VFD设备。目前的驱动器可以在六脉冲和十二脉冲非再生模式下运行，但使用的是相对较旧的嵌入式控制技术。此外，为了拥有竞争优势，该公司希望将控制算法的最新进展应用到新产品中。这需要新品种的微处理器，与目前使用的微处理器相比，它们的密度要高得多，架构也完全不同。目前CRD应用的目标是为公司的下一代VFD开发控制、电力电子和用户界面硬件。特别是，我们将开发先进的功能，如直接转矩控制，再生制动，多电平逆变器，应用于在设计中考虑可靠性和容错的大功率驱动器。

There has been widespread use of Variable Frequency Drives (VFD) devices in recent years due to theeconomic advantages they offer in achieving energy-efficient operation. As a result, VFDs are indispensablecomponents of many industry applications such as pumps, compressors, chillers, fans, blowers, crushers, andconveyors. The supporting organization, SPAR Engineering provides consulting and design engineering services in the areas of electrical, control, and automation, in various industries such as mining, utilities, oil and gas, pulp and paper, energy, and water/waste management. The company has built and utilized a proprietary VFD design in their projects which is over 10 years old. With the advent of new microcontrollers and emerging methods for controlling VFDs, the company is in the process of refining the previous designs and offering its next generation of VFDs. The requested funding is to enable the SFU researchers to work closely with the company to develop its next generation VFD unit. The present drive can operate in both six and twelve pulse non-regenerative modes but is using a relatively old embedded control technology. Furthermore, to have a competitive edge, the company wants to implement recent advances in control algorithms into the new product. This needs new breeds of microprocessors with much higher density and completely different architectures than what is currently being used. The objective of the current CRD application is to develop the control, power electronics, and user interface hardware for the company's next generation VFDs. In particular, we will develop advanced capabilities such as Direct Torque Control, Regenerative Braking, Multilevel Inverter for application to high power drives which consider reliability and fault tolerance in the design.