Trends in Integration for Magnetically Levitated Pump Systems

Highly compact magnetically levitated pump systems are of growing interest in semiconductor processing applications due to the increasing costs of clean room space. The need of a higher hydraulic pressure in a smaller mounting volume raises the necessity of a complete integration of the power and signal electronics together with the motor and the pump into one compact system. Thereby, the system complexity is increased in the first instance and problematic issues such as thermal interaction between the system parts and overheating have to be solved. However, the integration opens the door for an optimization of the complete system. Based on a thermal model and on analytical relations between the hydraulic, electric and mechanical system variables the integrated pump system is optimized aiming for maximum pressure density. Exemplarily, the optimum point is calculated for an existing magnetically levitated pump and the dependency of the hydraulic efficiency is discussed.