Liquid purification or separation – Processes – Including controlling process in response to a sensed condition
Patent
1986-07-18
1988-09-06
Nozick, Bernard
Liquid purification or separation
Processes
Including controlling process in response to a sensed condition
210799, 210137, 2104161, 210258, 55 46, 55171, 55166, 166267, 1661053, B01D 3502
Patent
active
047691565
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention relates generally to methods and means for pumping oil and water from deep wells and more particularly to the use of hydraulically-driven pumps. Although fluid power has long been used to drive such pumps, severe difficulties still exist in the pumps now available such as sand cutting, sand fouling, excessive use of energy, excessive downtime and excessive maintenance.
Although the use of sucker rods to operate a downhole reciprocating pump is the oldest and most widespread methods, the well known high first cost and endless maintenance problems inherent in sucker rod systems have almost become accepted by many operators as inevitable which, unfortunately, drives up the cost of oil and gas and many "crooked holes" cannot be pumped at all with the use of sucker rods. The practice of "gaslifting" liquids from wells by injecting pressurized gas into a column of liquid within a tubing is well known to be an inefficient system when compressors are required to compress the gas before injection, and it cannot be used at all in most deep wells of today.
Downhole hydraulic pumps have been used since 1935, but are used in less than 1% of pumping wells today because of excessive cost and excessive maintenance. Typical recommendation is to change the pump every two months.
Therefore, particularly with regard to such wells as offshore wells which are generally both deep and directionally drilled, when the pressure of their producing formation declines such that they will not longer flow on their own, a more reliable and efficient method and means for pumping is needed by the industry to gain many millions of barrels of oil and billions of cubic feet of gas, as the present invention provides.
In many oilwells, paraffin that may be present in the formation oil may precipitate from the oil as it nears the surface and deposit on the walls of the conduit and thereby reduce the flow area to make remedial action necessary which may result in considerable expense and lost production.
BACKGROUND ART
U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,362,777 and 3,123,007 disclose early systems for hydraulically driving a reciprocating well pump but neither have bearing on the present invention. Many similar patents exist, some having fluid motors for attachment to conventional pumps or to operate a string of sucker rods which in turn operate a conventional downhole pump.
Coberly U.S. Pat. No. 2,952,212, the type pump that virtually all downhole hydraulically driven pumps in use today comprise, operates by co-mingling spent power fluid with produced liquid from the well which requires separation and purification of all of the power fluid before recirculation to the downhole pump. A later Coberly U.S. Pat. No. 3,005,414, employs a power fluid string and a separate conduit to return exhaust power fluid to the surface and a production string to convey produced liquid to the wellhead as does the present invention. However, frequent clogging of small flow paths in that type of pump by solids entrained in the power fluid, require frequent placement of the pump.
As with all hydraulic equipment, some leakage may occur at moving seals, at pipe fittings or the like such that makeup fluid is required to replace such leakage so as to allow for continuous operation of the system. The open system described by Coberly causes co-mingling of the exhaust power fluid with the produced well fluid which in many wells may be mostly water, thereby requiring a production separator to process the entire stream of produced fluid mixed with exhausted power fluid so as to make available power fluid for continued operation. A closed system does not mingle produced fluid with exhausted power fluid and therefore, it is not required to separate the two for each cycle of the fluid, however, makeup fluid is required by the system to offset aforementioned leakage. Makeup fluid for a closed hydraulic system is usually provided by the operator keeping track of oil level in the tank and periodically delivering oil to inject into the system. Unattended operations in
REFERENCES:
patent: 1269134 (1918-06-01), Trumble
patent: 2593729 (1952-04-01), Coberly
patent: 2765850 (1956-10-01), Allen
patent: 2942552 (1960-06-01), Wayt
patent: 4330306 (1982-05-01), Salant
patent: 4410041 (1983-10-01), Davies et al.
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