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Pump Jack

A pumpjack is a machine used in oil wells that converts rotary motion to vertical reciprocating motion to drive an underground piston pump when bottom hole pressure is insufficient for oil to flow naturally to the surface. It works by lifting and lowering sucker rods connected to the piston pump 5 to 40 liters of oil-water emulsion per stroke. Deeper wells require more power to lift the increased weight of fluid up the wellbore. The pumpjack features a walking beam mechanism that gives it a characteristic nodding motion.

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288 views

Pump Jack

A pumpjack is a machine used in oil wells that converts rotary motion to vertical reciprocating motion to drive an underground piston pump when bottom hole pressure is insufficient for oil to flow naturally to the surface. It works by lifting and lowering sucker rods connected to the piston pump 5 to 40 liters of oil-water emulsion per stroke. Deeper wells require more power to lift the increased weight of fluid up the wellbore. The pumpjack features a walking beam mechanism that gives it a characteristic nodding motion.

Uploaded by

Andra Manu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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PUMPJACK

A pumpjack (also called donkey pumper, nodding donkey, pumping unit, horsehead pump,
rocking horse, beam pump, dinosaur, sucker rod pump (SRP), grasshopper pump, Big Texan,
thirsty bird, or jack pump) is the overground drive for a reciprocating piston pump in an oil
well.

It is used to mechanically lift liquid out of the well if there is not enough bottom hole
pressure for the liquid to flow all the way to the surface. The arrangement is commonly used
for onshore wells producing little oil. Pumpjacks are common in oil-rich areas.

Depending on the size of the pump, it generally produces 5 to 40 litres of liquid at each
stroke. Often this is an emulsion of crude oil and water. Pump size is also determined by the
depth and weight of the oil to remove, with deeper extraction requiring more power to move
the increased weight of the discharge column (discharge head).

A pumpjack converts the rotary mechanism of the motor to a vertical reciprocating motion to
drive the pump shaft, and is exhibited in the characteristic nodding motion. The engineering
term for this type of mechanism is a walking beam. It was often employed in stationary and
marine steam engine designs in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Down-hole
At the bottom of the tubing is the down-hole pump. This pump has two ball check valves: a
stationary valve at bottom called the standing valve, and a valve on the piston connected to
the bottom of the sucker rods that travels up and down as the rods reciprocate, known as the
traveling valve. Reservoir fluid enters from the formation into the bottom of the borehole
through perforations that have been made through the casing and cement (the casing is a
larger metal pipe that runs the length of the well, which has cement placed between it and
the earth; the tubing, pump and sucker rods are all inside the casing).

When the rods at the pump end are traveling up, the traveling valve is closed and the
standing valve is open (due to the drop in pressure in the pump barrel). Consequently, the
pump barrel fills with the fluid from the formation as the traveling piston lifts the previous
contents of the barrel upwards. When the rods begin pushing down, the traveling valve
opens and the standing valve closes (due to an increase in pressure in the pump barrel). The
traveling valve drops through the fluid in the barrel (which had been sucked in during the
upstroke). The piston then reaches the end of its stroke and begins its path upwards again,
repeating the process.

Often, gas is produced through the same perforations as the oil. This can be problematic if
gas enters the pump, because it can result in what is known as gas locking, where insufficient
pressure builds up in the pump barrel to open the valves (due to compression of the gas) and
little or nothing is pumped. To preclude this, the inlet for the pump can be placed below the
perforations. As the gas-laden fluid enters the well bore through the perforations, the gas
bubbles up the annulus (the space between the casing and the tubing) while the liquid moves
down to the standing valve inlet. Once at the surface, the gas is collected through piping
connected to the annulus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQJWcp8EcrE

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