A Control Method for Linear Permanent Magnet

Electric Submersible Pumps in a Modified

Integrated Drive-Motor System
Hussain A. Hussain1 , Bahareh Anvari1 , Hamid A. Toliyat1
1
Advanced Electric Machines & Power Electronics Lab; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA, hah027@tamu.edu

Abstract—Electric Submersible Pumps are a widespread in-

dustrial solution for artificial lift applications in oil industries.
Linear motors are becoming more popular as they are applied
for new applications in various fields. Integrated Drive-Motor
technology shows many promising advantages. In this paper, a
system which combines these three technologies for marginal
oil wells application is discussed. This system is intended to
overcome some of the sucker rod pump limitations. 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 main contribution of this paper is
a proposed variable speed control method of this modified system
that does not require a long signal cable. In order to avoid the
long signal cable, the DC bus voltage is used to control the motor
speed under Vector Control scheme. Experimental result verified
the effectiveness of the proposed control method.

Keywords- Variable speed drives, Machine vector control,

Permanent magnet motors, Pumps.
I. I NTRODUCTION
In most oil wells, the oil in the reservoir flows naturally
to the surface because of the sufficient formation pressure.
Initially, this pressure is high enough to start the production
at acceptable rates. As production continues, the oil pressure
starts to drop which results in a declined production rate.
Secondary [1] and enhanced [2] recovery methods are even-
tually used as the pressure declines during production to a
point where it no longer economically feasible to continue the
production.
Electric Submersible Pumps (ESP) have been used in ar-
tificial lift applications for the last few decades [3]. They
dominate the market in oil wells that require high production
rates. Commonly used ESPs consist of a : variable speed drive
(VSD) [4]-[5], long transmission cable, three-phase rotating
induction motor, a submersible centrifugal pump, seal (protec-
tor), and gas separator as shown in Figure 1. VSC is the power
electronics drive which usually consist of a rectifier, an inverter
and a microcontroller. Although ESP systems generally have
good efficiencies in the range of 60%, there is a vast area for
improvements especially in the cable, motor and pump [6]. Fig. 1. Main components of ESP systems.
The other commonly implemented technology is the beam
pump also known as the sucker rod pump [7] shown in
Figure 2. This technology leads the market for marginal and pump which are: three-phase induction motor, gear reducer,
stripper oil wells. Figure 3 shows the components of a beam crank and beam, sucker rod and a reciprocating pump.

978-1-5090-4281-4/17/$31.00 2017
c IEEE
 Recently, a new technology which combines the ESP and
beam pump has been introduced for stripper wells. The
rotating ESP configuration is modified to have a linear ESP
system. In this case, a linear motor is used instead of a rotating
motor and a centrifugal pump is replaced with a reciprocating
pump as shown in Figure 4. The main advantages of the linear
ESP system compared to the sucker rod pump are:
1) The ability to be used in deviated wells.
2) Requires smaller footprint on the surface which allow it to
be used in off-shore applications.
3) Eliminate the gear reducer, the crank and beam system and
the sucker rod.
Integrated Drive-Motor (IDM) shows promising advantages
[8]-[9]. In IDM systems, an electric motor is combined with
the VSC in a single enclosure downhole as shown in Figure 5.
Section II, presents a modified IDM system which shows
some advantages compared to the conventional IDM. In sec-
tion III, the variable speed control of the modified IDM. The
experimental results are shown in Section IV.
The paper discusses the control system for the linear motor
which drives the reciprocating pump. In this study, a perma-
nent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) is used because of
its higher efficiency and smaller physical size compared to
induction motors [10]. The motor is desired to have variable
speed and is controlled using vector control scheme. The
discussion is focused on the variable speed control system
implementation.

Fig. 3. Components of beam pump systems.

II. M ODIFIED I NTEGRATED D RIVE -M OTOR

Fig. 2. A beam pump system (pumpjack).
In conventional IDM systems, both the rectifier and inverter
are placed with motor in the same package. The main advan-
tage of this system is eliminating the problems associated with
a long high frequency cable. In this configuration, the long
cable has a line frequency of 60 Hz which will eliminate the
effects of the controller high switching frequency on the cable
[11]. The long cable will be capacitive and therefore requires
capacitive current and can result in low system power factor
and possible high voltage at drive input terminals.
However, the application of IDM in ESP requires special
consideration because of the extreme depth at which they op-
erate. The high temperature at these depths (200o C or 400o F)
is a major challenge for implementation of conventional IGBT
or MOSEFT-based motor drives. Nevertheless, wide bang gap
devices such as SiC or GaN are perfect candidates because of
 Fig. 4. Main components of Linear ESP systems.
their high temperature rating of 300o C [12].
The main challenge in this IDM system is the difficulty
of communication between the surface controller and the
drive. It requires a long separate signal cable or power-line
communication system which adds to the system cost.
Figure 6 shows the modified IDM system where the rectifier
is placed on the surface while the inverter is still integrated
with the motor.
This system has two main advantages compared to con-
ventional IDM. First, the long power cable is DC instead of
three phase AC. This will reduce the losses and the amount
of the required copper and eliminate the cable capacitance
and cable impedance unbalance problems [13]. Second, the
DC bus voltage could be used directly to control the speed
of the pump as shown in the next section. Obviously, this
will require a controlled rectifier such as PFC boost converter.
Additionally, a multi-phase fault-tolerant system may be used
Fig. 5. Conventional Integrated Drive-Motor system.
without additional cables.
One of the main challenges of this system is the speed
control of the reciprocating pump from the surface. The speed
control is required to efficiently operate the system. Once a
pumping cycle has been completed in a low pressure oil well,
the oil will need some period of time to refill the pump cavity
again. This time duration varies based on the pressure in the
formation and porosity and permeability of the rocks. This
characteristic of the oil well is usually called reservoir inflow.
Oil wells have limited inflow which could be mathematically
estimated based on the rocks and fluid properties.
For this reason, running the pump continuously in low
pressure oil wells is not the best practice. In practice, a timer
or pump-off controller (POC) must be used [14]-[15]. A timer
with 15 minutes period is commonly used where the ON/OFF
duty ratio is set by trial and error. Alternatively, POC could
be used to shut off the pump when the flow is insufficient.
 III. VARIABLE S PEED C ONTROL OF L INEAR ESP IN A
M ODIFIED IDM
If the motor is controlled using six-step method, the control
system of the modified IDM system will be simple under vari-
able DC bus voltage. However, the high performance vector
control shown in Figure 7 was selected for this application.
A tubular linear motor was selected for this application. The
motor model in the synchronous reference frame is given by
[16]-[17],
      
vd R + s Ld −ω Lq id 0
= + (1)
vq ω Ld R + s Lq iq ω λpm
Where R, Ld and Lq are the motor resistance, direct
inductance and quadrature inductance inductance respectively.
λpm is the permanent magnet flux linkage. ω is the motor
speed defined in the angular frame. The relations between the
angular and linear frames are,
π
ω= u (2)
τp
And,
π
θ= x (3)
τp
Where x and u are the linear position and speed respectively,
θ and ω are the angular position and speed respectively and
τp is the pole pitch which is the distance between the north
and south poles. The linear motor force could be derived as,
3 π
F = (λpm + (Ld − Lq ) id ) iq (4)
2 τp
Where the direct Ld and quadrature inductance Lq are equal
L, i.e. Ld = Lq = L in this case.
The DC bus voltage could be efficiently used to control the
pump speed since lower DC bus voltage is required at lower
speeds.
A. Surface Controller
The first step which is performed by the surface controller
is to select the appropriate DC bus voltage based on the
desired reference speed ω ∗ . Assuming the rated current Irated
Fig. 6. Modified Integrated Drive-Motor system.
is required to be always available, the required peak phase
voltage at the motor terminals Vp for a given reference speed
is given by:

POC utilizes a flow meter, motor ampere meter, load cell, or Vp∗ = (RIrated + λpm ω ∗ )2 + (ω ∗ LIrated )2 (5)
a dynamometer card.
Figure 8 shows the minimum required peak value of the
In this system, the pump speed was varied based on a flow phase voltage as a function of the desired reference speed.
meter placed on the surface. The speed control of this system The voltage vs. speed relation could be linearly approximated
may not be straight forward or cost efficient. Again, a long since a low inductance motor was used. The motor parameters
signal cable or power-line communication system is required are shown in Table I.
to command speeds from the surface to the downhole motor. If the inverter utilizes Space Vector PWM, the minimum
In the next section, a control method is presented which avoids DC bus voltage Vdc required at the output of the rectifier to
the use of long signal cable or power-line communication run the motor at this speed is given by,
system. The proposed control method only utilizes the DC √ ∗
∗
bus voltage to control the motor speed. Vdc = 3Vp + Idc Rcable (6)
 Fig. 7. Block diagram of Vector Control of the PM linear motor.

Where Idc Rcable is the total voltage drop across the two- Finally, the calculated reference speed is used as the pos-
wire DC cable resistance. itive and negative limit values of the output of the position
controller in the vector control algorithm.
B. Downhole controller The minimum required DC bus voltage given in (6) will
The next step is done downhole where a voltage sensor is cause the inverter to run at its maximum voltage limit. Prac-
used to measure the DC bus voltage at the inverter input down- tically, any curve above the minimum required voltage curve
hole. The desired reference speed could be reverse calculated may be used to relate the DC bus voltage to the command
by solving (6) without the DC cable voltage drop term as: speed. In this case, the surface controller selects the DC bus
voltage for a given speed. Then the downhole controller will
√
Vp = Vdc / 3 (7) use the DC bus voltage and current measurements to calculate
the speed command.
Then the desired reference speed could be found by re-
arranging (5) and solving for ω ∗ in the following quadratic IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS
equation, The block diagram shown in Figure 7 was simulated in
MATLAB/SIMULINK including the inverter and linear motor
(λ2pm +L2 Irated
2
)ω ∗2 +2RIrated λpm ω ∗ = Vp2 −R2 Irated
2
(8) models.The surface controller was added to the system model.
The downhole controller was used to limit the output of the
position controller to the reference speed.The DC bus voltage
50 was selected to be 600 time the commanded speed. The system
was simulated at three different commanded speeds. Figure 9
shows the simulated reference and measured speeds at 150V.
40 Figure 10 shows the same speeds at 90V while the results at
30V are shown in Figure 11. Table I shows system parameters
Motor Peak Phase Voltage [V]

values .
30

20
TABLE I
M OTOR PARAMETERS

10
Parameter Symbol Value Unit

Motor Resistance R 3.1 Ω

0 Motor Inductance L 5.8 mH

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
Linear Speed [m/s]
Motor Flux Linkage λpm 0.25 V.s
Fig. 8. Minimum phase voltage for a given reference speed.
 30 supply was used to imitate the controlled rectifier. In order
Reference
Simulated to apply load force to the linear motor, it was coupled to a
20 rotating generator using a linear-to-rotary magnetic gear [18]
shown in Figure 12.
10
Since the transmission cable is DC, a distributed model or
even a model is not required and a resistor was used to model
Speed [cm/s]

the cable. An encoder was used to provide the position of the

0
linear motor.
The block diagram shown in Figure 7 was implemented
−10 using a DSP and a six-switch three-phase IGBT inverter to
control the motor. The current Id∗ was set to zero and the
−20 controller coefficients were designed based on the required
bandwidth. The DC bus voltage was varied between 30V to
−30
150V. The linear motor was commanded to travel a stroke of
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
time [sec] 65 cm back and forth. Because of this short stroke and limited
motor force and thus acceleration, the maximum achievable
Fig. 9. Simulation results for commanded and actual speeds at 150V. speed was 25 cm/s.
Figure 13 shows the motor operating at 150V, the maximum
30
Reference speed reference was 25 cm/s.
Simulated
For 90V operation, the speed reference was 15 cm/s as
20
shown in Figure 14. Figure 15 shows the speed response when
the DC bus voltage was set at 30V with reference speed of 5
10 cm/s.
In all three cases, the reference speed varies as the DC bus
Speed [cm/s]

0 voltage changes and the actual speed follows the reference

speed. However, the measured speed did not match the com-
−10
mand speed during acceleration. This is due to the mechanical
time constant (mass and friction) of the motor despite the
fact that the maximum available force was applied during
−20
acceleration. Moreover, Because of the short stroke length and
limited motor current/force, the motor reaches its final position
−30
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 before the speed is able to settle down to the final value.
time [sec]

VI. C ONCLUSION
Fig. 10. Simulation results for commanded and actual speeds at 90V.
In this paper, a speed control method for Linear Electric
30 Submersible Pumps used in a modified Integrated Drive-Motor
Reference
Simulated system is proposed. In this system, the rectifier was placed on
20 the surface while the inverter was placed downhole with the
motor.
10
The DC bus voltage was varied to control the speed of
the pump without any additional signal cables. Experimental
Speed [cm/s]

results showed that the proposed control method could be

0
implemented in a vector controlled drive for high performance
applications.
−10

−20
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