The suction cup pump, also known as pumpjack, nodding donkey, or horsehead pump, is a common oil exploration pump in Texas and other areas. It pumps oil from depths of 10,000 feet or more using a mechanical chain reaction. The pump design resembles a large pendulum and can pump 7 to 20 barrels of oil per hour. It is not initially efficient due to gas trapped in new deposits. The pump is commonly used on land where a rich oil field is known to exist.
A suction cup pump is a type of oil exploration pump commonly seen in fields in Texas in the United States and other areas where potential deposits of oil exist deep underground. It is capable of pumping oil from depths of 10,000 feet (3.05 kilometers) or more and somewhat resembles the motion of a large pendulum turned on its side. There are many other names for the suction pump in the oil exploration industry, including pumpjack, nodding donkey, and horsehead pump, but they are all designed on the same principles.
Each component of a vacuum pump also has a unique name, which can seem difficult to figure out unless someone is familiar with the machinery. The individual parts all act as articulated links in a mechanical chain reaction that gradually transfers the circular motion to an overall up and down pumping motion. The whole mechanism works similar to a crankshaft assembly in an automobile or train locomotive, or the shock-absorbing armature on doors that close automatically at a slow pace to let someone through.
First, an above-ground motor turns a nearby flywheel via a belt or chain, which is essentially a larger wheel that rotates more slowly but has more torque or force per rotation. This flywheel has a nearly horizontal arm attached to it known as a crank, which moves up and down at an angle of about 60° to the horizon. The crank is connected to a Pitman arm, which is the longest beam on the vacuum pump machine. Pitman’s arm is nearly horizontal, but angles down slightly where the end attaches to a weight known as a horse’s head, an anvil-shaped counterweight that serves as a type of pendulum end. All of these components move together to pull and push a cable Hanger which is suspended from the horse’s head in a vertical shaft in the ground.
The Hangar cable is connected to a sequential series of parts known as the Polishing Rod, Stuffing Box and Rod Cord, which together act like a piston of sorts in the vertical chamber. In this vertical channel, they all move what is known as a moving valve and piston to maintain a constant change of pressure up and down the shaft. A fixed valve further down the shaft is fixed in place and channels the full force of the piston action so that as the mechanism is pushed down the pressure of the oil builds into the ground and as it is withdrawn this oil is drawn from the underground tank and conveyed.
The cupped pump design typically removes about 5.3 gallons (20 liters) of fluid for each pump cycle, which equals one barrel of oil or 42 gallons (160 liters) for about every eight pumping cycles. One cycle on a pumpjack can take less than a minute, so the equipment can pump 7 to 20 barrels of oil per hour depending on how fast it’s set to run. This is very slow by standards such as those of offshore drilling rigs, but pumpjacks are relatively inexpensive and easy to install and maintain in multiple locations.
This type of pumping unit is also known as a “thirsty bird”, as it resembles a bird that continuously bobs its head up and down, or a “grasshopper pump” due to the fact that its general structure resembles that of a grasshopper, and its unique mechanical movement has many industrial applications. The oil prospecting suction pump is not initially very efficient at pumping oil out of the ground, as there tends to be a lot of gas trapped in new deposits. Optimally, the vacuum pump has a volumetric pumping efficiency of 80% with oil, compared to other compounds such as gas and water.
The most frequent use for sucker pump designs in oil exploration is on land where a rich oil field is known to likely exist. They don’t pump a large volume of oil per stroke, but are built on a set of reliable mechanical principles that have been used in other applications since the 18th century. Small hand-held versions of the suction pump design still exist in many US park systems, where they can be used to mechanically pump water from an underground reservoir or aquifer.
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