American Oil and Gas Reporter - January 2012 - 186

Production Technology

Altronic's directed energy ignition technology provides more
efficient ignition to enable compressor engines to more efficiently burn lean fuel mixtures
with high air-to-fuel ratios.

one part of fuel," Bell notes. "However,
lean-burn engines have air-to-fuel ratios
up to 28-to-1, which creates real challenges
for conventional ignition systems."
Directed engine ignition technology
delivers a significant amount of current
that can escalate throughout the ignition
spark duration, providing more efficient
ignition of the fuel-air mixture, claims
Bell. "Testing proves that having that
extra current later on in the combustion
cycle provides significant additional ignitability," he explains. "There are some
significant performance advantages associated with directed energy ignition
that were not previously available in capacitive discharge systems or inductive
ignition systems."
Altronic's directed engine ignition
technology can be used in a stand-alone
open-chamber mode to ignite clean mixtures or as a supplement to other technologies, such as precombustion chambers
or high-pressure fuel injection, Bell goes
on. "In either case, whether you are operating the directed energy technology
by itself or as a supplement, there are appreciable performance benefits that we
have documented with this new technology," he points out.
"In one test, a Cooper Bessemer
GMV-4TF™ integral compressor engine
showed more rapid combustion heat release and an increase in brake thermal
efficiency (BTE) in which a 1 percent
increase in BTE resulted in as much as a
3.5 percent decrease in fuel consumption,"
Bell relates.
That test, performed at the large bore

engine test facility at Colorado State University's Engines & Energy Conversion
Laboratory, also revealed that nitrogen
oxide emissions were lowered by almost
50 percent compared with the performance
of a standard capacitive discharge ignition
system, he notes.
"More stable cylinder-to-cylinder and
cycle-to-cycle combustion allows for more
limited governing action, reduced fuel
consumption, and lower NOx emissions
at all operating conditions," Bell summarizes.
In addition to introducing the technology as an aftermarket product, Bell
says Altronic is working with manufacturers of lean-burn engines with both
precombustion chambers and open chamber configurations. The technology can
help operators upgrade even older compressor engines that were not designed
with low NOx performance in mind, Bell
concludes.
"Many operators facing increasingly
strict emission reduction requirements
need a means to operate these legacy engines while maintaining and achieving
lower emissions and maintaining a reasonable amount of efficiency relative to
the engine and the fuel," he points out.
"This technology gives those operators a
new option for meeting those objectives."
Motor Controller
The TechnoWise Group's new MOTORWISE™ motor controller is saving
operators 20-30 percent on electricity
costs in the field, says Chief Marketing
Officer Frank Fernandez.

186 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

The energy-saving controller is designed for three-phase motors on pumpjacks using wye, delta, and groundeddelta power distribution schemes, he says.
Models are available to accommodate
pumpjacks with up to 30-, 60- and 100horsepower motors.
Pumpjack motors are subject to varying
loads throughout a pumping cycle, Fernandez says, noting that MOTORWISE
units adjust the amount of electricity to
correspond with the load requirement at
any given time.
"The controller dynamically monitors
the loading on that electrical motor multiple times for every cycle and weight
position of the pumpjack," he states. "It
makes decisions on how much energy
the motor needs to do the work at each
interval. The power the motor receives is
matched to the amount of work the motor
needs to do. If the motor is doing a lot of
work, it gets a lot of energy. If the motor
is not doing much work, the level of
energy is reduced."
Pumpjack motors commonly operate

The MOTORWISE™ controller from the
TechnoWise Group is designed to reduce electricity costs by monitoring
pumpjack loading and automatically adjust the amount of electricity supplied to
the motor based on specific load requirements at any given point in the
cycle.
American Oil and Gas Reporter - January 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Oil and Gas Reporter - January 2012
