Development of a control strategy to optimize pumping speed during the cycle of systems operating by sucker-rod pumping.
Sucker-Rod Pump, artificial lift, PID controller, dynamometer card, pumping speed.
In the petroleum industry, automation and control of oil wells stand out due to the relevant results of its correct use, thus becoming indispensable in the oil industry to achieve maximum performance from each well. Sucker-rod pumping is an artificial lift method applied to onshore environment, it is the most used method in number of installed wells in the world. In order to introduce new control techniques to this method, this work comes with the proposal of developing a control strategy for pumping speed optimization. The developed tool operates with the speed variation during the cycle, in order to increase the average pumping speed and to mitigate the negative effects related to this increase. A proportional integral derivative controller (PID) was used. Initially, a bibliographic survey on the subject was carried out, covering patents and studies that had as theme the variation of the pumping speed, as well as the basic concepts about the PID control and the role of the surface and downhole dynamometer charts. To implement the control, it was used the programming language JAVA. For validation, a simulator was used as a virtual well and simulations were performed with the developed controller, comparing the results obtained before and after the control application. As a result, it was observed that the strategy developed was able to optimize the production in SRP systems, considering that there was an increase in the production in some wells, followed by a reduction in efforts on the equipment of the pumping unit.