A sand collector including a diverter section and a filter section. The diverter section having a tubular portion with at least one aperture extending therethrough and at least one collector extending outwardly therefrom to cooperate with an exterior side of the tubular portion to form a channel in which solids traveling on the exterior side of the tubular portion from the upper end toward the lower end are guided to the aperture. The filter section having a tubular portion with an upper end, a lower end, and a sidewall extending between the upper end and the lower end. The filter section having at least one aperture extending through the sidewall, the upper end of the filter section extending from the lower end of the collector section and the lower end of the filter section being closed and connectable to at least one of another sucker rod and an upper end of a pump assembly.

The invention discloses a direct drive motor-based walking beam pumping unit, comprising a base; a support is arranged at the upper end of the base; a walking beam is arranged at the upper end of the support; a horsehead is arranged at a first of the walking beam; a lifting rope is arranged on the horsehead and a beam hanger is arranged on the lifting rope; a balance weight is arranged at a second end of the walking beam away from the horsehead; a barrel is arranged at the upper end of the base; a direct drive motor is arranged at the upper end of the barrel. The invention cancels the combination of belt, belt pulley and reducer conventionally used in the pumping unit, greatly lowering the failure rate of the pumping unit, decreasing the frequency of maintenance and service, reducing the cost in use and improving the production efficiency.

A tool configured to align a polished rod within a carrier bar of a pumpjack is described. While this tool can include any suitable component, in some cases, it includes a cylindrical member having an internal conduit, allowing the cylindrical member to wrap around and receive the polished rod. In some cases, the cylindrical member has a top having a first outer diameter, and a bottom having a second, larger outer diameter. In some cases, the cylindrical member comprises one, two, or more discrete pieces. In some cases, a flange extends horizontally from the bottom of the cylindrical member, to be disposed at a bottom portion of the carrier bar. In some cases, the cylindrical member comprises a slit that extends from the top to the bottom of the cylindrical member to allow the member to be opened and to receive the polished rod. Additional implementations are described.

A properly calibrated load-cell is critical for the safe operation of a rod-pumping system. Load readings are utilized for shutdown thresholds, and incorrect measurements can cause those safe load limits to be exceeded. Correct surface load, combined with position measurement, is also important for the diagnosis of the complete pumping system. The diagnostic method for calculating down-hole conditions presents an interesting opportunity to validate surface load measurements, even from the incorrect load measurements themselves. The calculated down-hole dynamometer card will be transposed on a distinct diagonal with respect to both load and position, if the input surface load measurements are incorrect. A load offset can then be identified from this shifting and the surface load measurements can be corrected. Calculated pump cards have been traditionally aligned with the surface dyno card position, and so this diagonal pump card shifting correlation with incorrect, or unexpected, surface load has not been realized.

An apparatus for measuring strain in a polished rod of a beam pump unit includes a body having an upper wide section, a lower wide section, and a narrow section having a reduced width in comparison to each of the upper and lower wide sections. A bore is formed in the narrow section. The apparatus also includes at least two connectors configured to connect the body to the rod. The bore is positioned between the two connectors in a direction that is parallel to an axis of the rod. The apparatus further includes a strain gauge positioned in the bore, so as to measure strain in the rod between the two points of connection.

A mechanical rod rotator assembly comprising a mechanical rod rotator and an actuating mechanism for a mechanical pumping rod rotator, wherein the mechanism comprises a connecting arm and a guide member that slidably embraces the pumping rod, in order to allow a pivoting lever that is in connection with said connecting arm, to interact with the internal mechanism of the rod rotator to gradually rotate the pumping rod and thus avoid impartial wear caused by the constant up and down reciprocating movement of the same within the well, being in turn that the mechanism of the invention does not require special tools for its assembly and installation.

A sucker rod cleaning system includes an inductive heating device, a feed mechanism, a first support and a second support. An electromagnet of the inductive heating device includes a wire coil head that is configured to inductively heat a sucker rod positioned within a heating zone. The feed mechanism is configured to feed a sucker rod through the heating zone in a feed direction. The first support is positioned on an upstream side of the wire coil head, and is configured to support a portion of a sucker rod as it is fed through the heating zone by the feed mechanism. The second support is positioned on a downstream side of the wire coil head, and is configured to support a portion of a sucker rod as it is fed through the heating zone by the feed mechanism.

A polished rod elevator has a top lift platform defining a polished rod passage and a mouth to laterally receive a polished rod into the polished rod passage; a plurality of linear actuators depending below the top lift platform and radially spaced from an axis of the polished rod passage to define a production tree receiving gap; and a plurality of arcuate wellhead flange mounting base plates connected to base ends of the plurality of linear actuators. Related methods of use and kits are discussed.

A gas separator including a first separator section and a second separator section. The first separator section and the second separator section each including an outer tubular member having at least one opening extending therethrough adjacent an upper end and an inner tubular member positioned in the outer tubular member to define an annulus. The annulus of the first separator section is fluidically sealed from a tubing string. A lower end of the inner tubular member of the second separator section is open to define a lower open end having a flow area and the lower end of the outer tubular member is fluidically sealed. The inner tubular member of the first separator section has at least one opening extending therethrough adjacent the lower end thereof. The opening has a flow area less than the flow area of the lower open end.

A method of probabilistically estimating a velocity of a plunger of a beam pump may comprise continuously monitoring well acoustics using a plurality of passive acoustic sensors attached to external structures of the beam pump; digitizing outputs of the plurality of passive acoustic sensors and sending the digitized outputs to a computing device for storage and processing; and using the digitized outputs of the plurality of passive acoustic sensors, estimating a probability of the velocity of the plunger using a hidden Markov model (HMM) to represent a probability of a position and the probability of the velocity of the plunger, the HMM comprising a state space model and an observational model.