A fault monitoring system for a reciprocating pump driven by a linear motor for oil pumping systems

Linear Electric Submersible Pump is a new industrial solution in artificial lift applications. Linear motors are placed downhole to drive the reciprocating pump directly. This system is intended to overcome some of the sucker rod pump limitations. The new configuration will allow implementation in deviated and off-shore oil wells. Integrated Drive-Motor technology shows many promising advantages. In this paper, a modified configuration for Linear Electric Submersible Pumps used in an Integrated Drive-Motor system is presented. In this system, the rectifier is placed on the surface while the inverter is integrated with the motor downhole. The reciprocating pump is required to run reliably at optimal conditions since any fault may result in several days of shut down time and a huge loss in production. This paper proposes a new fault monitoring system for the Linear Electric Submersible Pumps. The proposed system is constructed using a model based load force observer. Experimental results verified the effectiveness of the proposed method.