Monitoring of equipment associated with a borehole/conduit

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10458224-B2
Application number	US-201515115533-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Feb 2, 2015
Priority date	Jan 31, 2014
Publication date	Oct 29, 2019
Grant date	Oct 29, 2019

Abstract

Monitoring one or more items of equipment associated with a borehole or other conduit. A sensor system includes a vibration sensor for sensing vibrations at one or more sensor locations associated with one or more items of the equipment and/or the borehole or other conduit. A processing system processes the sensor information to determine a characteristic of the operation of the one or more items of equipment and/or the borehole or other conduit.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A monitoring system for one or more items of equipment associated with a borehole or other conduit, the monitoring system comprising:
a sensor system having a vibration sensor subsystem which is configured to output sensor information indicative of vibrations at one or more sensor locations, the one or more sensor locations being associated with the one or more items of equipment and/or fluid flow within the borehole or other conduit; and
a processing system which is configured to:
process the sensor information to determine a characteristic of the operation of the one or more items of equipment and/or the fluid flow within the borehole or other conduit, the characteristic including a frequency spectrum of the vibrations at the one or more sensor locations summed over a monitoring time period;
identify one or more changes in the characteristic indicative of a status or imminent event based on comparing the frequency spectrum with one or more historic frequency spectra summed over a time period and thereby determining the status or the imminent event in relation to the one or more items of equipment, and
output control information to control the operation of the one or more items of equipment responsive to the identified one or more changes.

2. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the control information includes an instruction to shut down, start-up, slow down, or speed up the one or more items of equipment.

3. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the status or the imminent event includes one or more of: a failure of the one or more items of equipment, an imminent failure of the one or more items of equipment, inefficient operation of the one or more items of equipment, or damage to part of the one or more items of equipment.

4. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the processing system is further configured to determine a plurality of frequency spectra, with each frequency spectrum relating to and summed over a different monitoring time period, and to analyse the plurality of frequency spectra to identify one or more changes in the frequency spectra.

5. The monitoring system of claim 4 , wherein the one or more changes in the frequency spectra include a change of frequency of vibrations and/or a change of amplitude or magnitude of vibrations.

6. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of frequency spectra, or each spectrum, is generated using sensor information from a plurality of the one or more sensor locations, wherein the sensor information has been summed in a frequency domain to produce a summation.

7. The monitoring system of claim 6 , wherein the summation is a weighted summation based on the position of the one or more sensor locations relative to a center of a region.

8. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the characteristic includes one or more harmonic frequencies of vibration.

9. The monitoring system of claim 8 , wherein the processing system is further configured to compare the one or more harmonic frequencies with one or more historic harmonic frequencies to determine the status or the imminent event in relation to the one or more items of equipment.

10. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the characteristic includes a liquid-gas interface location.

11. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the characteristic includes a sand production rate.

12. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the characteristic is an indication of gases in fluid passing through or past the one or more items of equipment.

13. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein determining a characteristic of the operation of the one or more items of equipment and/or the fluid flow within the borehole or other conduit includes outputting an audio signal representative of vibrations at the one or more sensor locations.

14. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more items of equipment includes a pump and the one or more sensor locations are associated with the pump.

15. The monitoring system of claim 14 , wherein the pump is an electrical submersible pump.

16. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the vibration sensing subsystem includes one or more optical fibers and the one or more sensor locations are locations along a length of the one or more optical fibers.

17. The monitoring system of claim 16 , wherein the vibration sensor subsystem is a distributed vibration sensor.

18. The monitoring system of claim 17 , wherein the distributed vibration sensor is a heterodyne distributed vibration sensor.

19. The monitoring system of claim 16 , wherein the vibration sensor subsystem includes:
an electromagnetic radiation source configured to emit electromagnetic radiation along the optical fiber and located at a first location; and
an electromagnetic radiation receiver configured to receive electromagnetic radiation reflected towards the first location by the optical fiber or one or more other components of the vibration sensor subsystem.

20. The monitoring system of claim 16 , wherein the vibration sensor subsystem is configured to output temperature sensor information indicative of a temperature at the one or more sensor locations.

21. The monitoring system of claim 16 , wherein the vibration sensor subsystem includes at least one Bragg grating at the one or more sensor locations.

22. The monitoring system of claim 16 , further comprising:
one or more switches or filters that obtain temperature and vibration data over the same one or more optical fibers by modulating operation of the vibration sensor subsystem over time or wavelength.

23. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the vibration sensor subsystem is further configured to output sensor information indicative of vibrations at the one or more sensor locations caused as the result of the operation of the one or more items of equipment in accordance with the control information.

24. The monitoring system of claim 1 , further comprising an auxiliary sensor subsystem which is configured to output auxiliary sensor information to the processing system, the auxiliary sensor information being indicative of an aspect of the operation of the one or more items of equipment, wherein the processing system is further configured to determine the characteristic based on the sensor information and the auxiliary sensor information.

25. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the characteristic of the one or more items of equipment and/or the fluid flow within the borehole or other conduit includes a flow condition for fluid upstream or downstream of the one or more items of equipment.

26. The monitoring system of claim 1 , wherein the processing system is further configured to prompt the operator automatically to schedule maintenance as a result of the identified one or more changes.

27. A method of monitoring one or more items of equipment associated with a borehole or other conduit, the method comprising:
outputting sensor information indicative of vibrations at one or more sensor locations, the one or more sensor locations being associated with the one or more items of equipment and/or fluid flow within the borehole or other conduit; and
processing the sensor information to:
generating a frequency spectrum by summing the sensor information indicative vibrations at the one or more sensor locations over a monitoring time period;
determine a characteris

Assignees

• Schlumberger Technology Corp

Inventors

• Dickenson Paul Frederick Cilgrim
• Lees Gareth P
• Hartog Arthur H
• Xie Cheng-Gang
• Hammond Paul Simon
• Johnson Ashley Bernard
• Oddie Gary Martin
• Meredith Andrew William
• Monmont Franck Bruno Jean
• Cuny Theo

Classifications

• E21B47/008 Primary

  Monitoring of down-hole pump systems, e.g. for the detection of "pumped-off" conditions · CPC title

• G01V1/50

  Analysing data · CPC title

• G01V1/40

  specially adapted for well-logging · CPC title

• E21B47/00 Primary

  Survey of boreholes or wells (monitoring pressure or flow of drilling fluid E21B21/08) · CPC title

• G01N29/2418

  using optoacoustic interaction with the material, e.g. laser radiation, photoacoustics (photoacoustic cells G01N21/1702; measuring characteristics of vibrations by using radiation-sensitive means G01H9/00; acousto-optical conversion techniques for short-range imaging G01S15/8965; sound-producing devices using laser bundle G10K15/046) · CPC title