Conceptual Design of an In-Pipe Displacement System Applicable for Oil Well Production Column

Oil well production rate should be maintained during its lifecycle and maintenance interventions are necessary to reach this goal. Production engineer teams work on different ways to make the production stable and to enhance the oil recovery from the reservoirs. However, interventions are necessary to maintain or recover the production rate. Some problems that cause maintenance are malfunctioning/wear of equipment, clogging/obstruction and operational mistakes. These maintenances are required using expensive equipment, especially on offshore operations. In order to reduce the overall cost of interventions, robotic systems have been proposed. In this work, a conceptual development for a robotic production column well intervention system is proposed. This equipment should be strong enough to resist oil well environmental characteristics. Nowadays, the challenge involves high pressure and high temperature wells, high flow rates, a long/deep well and other very hostile features. Even though, this device has to be very slim and lightweight because it will be responsible for carrying on other systems (measurement / inspection tools, completion tools, etc.) displacing into the oil well production column. On the other hand, it needs to have highly efficient power consumption since the power availability is usually limited in the actuation environment of this autonomous equipment. In order to guarantee the achievement of the desirable requirements, the design team followed the best practices of the product development process aided by a design for lifecycle guidelines.