American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2018 - 96

SpecialReport: Automation & Digital Fields
again and again that tank level monitors
do not allow the desired precision. Regardless of how accurate the level measurement is, it cannot be equated to a volume with the same accuracy.
Heartbeat Of Injection
However, steadily declining automation
costs can pave the way for unique and
pointed solutions that allow operators to
create precise key performance indicators
and metrics that quantify the benefit of
chemical injection programs without using
tank volume calculations as the key usage
metric. Advancements in microprocessors,
distributed computing, edge data analytics
and cloud signal processing may offer a
solution by capitalizing on the chemical
injection pump, a piece of equipment
that is as ubiquitous as the chemical tank
in oil field production operations.
Chemical injection pumps are essential
components of the continuous injection
value chain. Using the positive displacement of a plunger or diaphragm actuated
by pneumatic or electric motors, chemical
injection pumps provide the "heartbeat"
of injection. Each pump stroke displaces
a very specific volume of fluid, and
pumps can be field-calibrated and dialed
in to deliver accurate and precise chemical
injection rates.

As the industry transitions from pneumatically actuated to electronically actuated chemical injection pumps, electric
controllers have been developed in parallel
to manage the actuation of chemical
pumps. Generally, some form of digital
controller is used anywhere an electric
chemical injection pump is installed.
At the heart of the digital pump is a
microcontroller, the core of any sophisticated electric pump controller. It carries
the essential logic that determines how
the motor is driven to deliver a calibrated
volume of chemical. Thanks largely to
rapid advancements in smartphone technology over the past decade, microprocessors embedded into controller boards have
experienced enormous evolutions. In particular, the emergence of the Internet of
Things has introduced a connectivity component to the equation, as industrial devices
and controllers containing microprocessors
begin to connect to the global Web.
With the emergence of the IoT movement and increases in edge compute
power, industrial technology companies
are able to integrate high-fidelity data
collection and analytical processing on
small microcontrollers with cloud-based,
infinitely scalable data mining and machine-learning processes to drive improvements to the distributed intelligence

Technological advancements
are transforming chemical injection pumps into automated
smart devices that can collect
high-frequency data, optimize
production chemical programs
and measure chemical usage
much more precisely than applying steel oil tank strapping
methods to calculate chemical
volumes in an HDPE storage
tank.

96 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

systems. These systems then feed back
to the cloud processes, creating an automated and continuous improvement loop
that optimizes industrial processes in
ways never before seen.
Better Automation, Better Data
What these advancements deliver is
not only better automation processes, but
also better data. Modern microcontrollers
can collect high-fidelity data at sub-second
intervals, and the distributed intelligence
allows for real-time processing that previously could be done only with onpremises or cloud-based SCADA servers.
The opportunities afforded to automation
as low-cost edge computational power
grows are becoming nearly boundless.
Furthermore, advancements in cloud
data storage techniques, machine learning
and business intelligence interfaces now
allow operators to unlock the critical KPIs
to evaluate their chemical management
programs. Built on the foundation of
quality data, business analytics tools continue to grow in sophistication and insight,
while cost and complexity decrease.
In the past, an operator might have
hired an expensive, global business analytics consulting firm to build and maintain
a custom database and user interface to
track key business metrics, only to have
such metrics grow stale over the course
of a year. Now, anyone can harness
"freemium," open-source business intelligence tools to effortlessly spin up new
reports and dashboards that highlight and
trend important performance indicators.
Some emerging companies are leveraging these growing tool sets within fullstack value solutions targeted at specific
industries. New businesses are taking lessons learned from smartphone, smart speaker and smart home industries and applying
them to unique industrial applications.
Just like a digital retail giant might deploy
a smart speaker to capture and automate
people's shopping preferences to predict
buying patterns and prescribe new retail
products, industrial experts can deploy
connected edge microcontrollers that automate and monitor industrial equipment
to track performance, predict failures and
prescribe maintenance routines.
Instead of analyzing data from Web ad
clicks to assess KPIs for retail advertising
campaigns, an operator can synthesize
power consumption, cost trends, materials
use, and production performance and
workover data to drive new and improving
KPIs for their various production support
American Oil and Gas Reporter - August 2018

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