Mechatronic Spring Drives for Rod Borehole Pumps

The work is committed to the development of novel types of drives for rod borehole pumps, specifically mechatronic spring drives with energy recovery. These drives have the potential to reduce the size, weight, and energy costs by several orders of magnitude. The central concept is to design an oscillatory system as a spring drive with energy recovery, wherein the potential energy of the springs is transformed into the kinetic energy of the rod, and subsequently, the kinetic energy of the rod is converted back into the potential energy of the springs. Various linear motor designs are utilized to counterbalance dissipative losses. The paper examines the utilization of load balanced drive variants and the simultaneous operation of two drive variants operating in reverse phase to ensure the mutual balance of rod mass. It is demonstrated that in the case of weight balancing, the mass of power springs is twice as large as compared to drives that operate synchronously, while performing the same operation with the same number of cycles per minute and the same masses of the rods. The power consumption necessary to compensate for dissipative losses is also evaluated. It has been established that in this case, the amount of energy consumed during the load balancing will be twice as much. In addition, the study shows that autonomous power supply is achievable through the utilization of solar panels and wind generators.