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Glossary

software engineering, solve database problem
Applying Technology to solve your problems.
     
 

Designing Rod Pumps

"That’s Nodding Donkeys to you and me".

The problem was to write a computer program that would help design a rod pump.

"Simple you say".

A few bits of angle iron, a storage tank and off you go. Well its not that simple.

If you have ever seen one; there is a rod that disappears into the ground. This rod actually stretches down into the oil reservoir. Stretches is the key word here.
If you imagine a 2 inch wide metal rod, you do not think of it in terms of an elastic band.
Well take a thousand feet of it and it soon begins to act just like an elastic band.The longer and hence heavier the rods the more they stretch.
This is simple if the rod isn’t moving, it just stretches and sits there. As you’ve guessed the problems start when you move the rod and in this case the rod pump engine moves the rod up and down.

Getting this amount of metal to move is tough enough. But the engine needs to move it up for several seconds (upward stroke) and then completely reverse its direction a few seconds later (downward stroke). This reciprocating motion makes the length of metal rod behave like a bungee. If the engine starts pushing the rod down whilst it is still trying to come up then massive forces (potentially destructive) are created.

Our role was to apply our engineering skills to understand these problems. Having an engineering background allows us to understand these sorts of complex problems.

We also worked alongside oil engineers from one of the world's leading oil companies who have extensive experience of oil extraction. These skills combined with the power of today’s personal computers allowed us to develop a notebook PC based rod pump design and tuning tool that any engineer in the field could use.
In addition to the tuning and diagnostics facilities data can be transmitted back to a central computer system that could do further analysis and collate data from many different pump installations. This allows remote monitoring of, for example, maintenance problems and production rates.