Abstract: At present, in the petroleum industry, the design of the drive system for drilling rigs is largely conservative for safety reasons. A large redundant power capacity configuration is often adopted, and there is a lack of detection means to monitor the energy state during operation. The lifting unit of an oil drilling rig relies on potential energy load, which undergoes an cyclic operation and has the potential to recover, store and use the energy. In this study, a new detection device is proposed and developed. With such a device, real-time characteristics of the transmission system, power change and energy transformation are obtained experimentally during operation. Based on the experimental results and data analysis, it is found that the diesel engine adopted for the drilling rig is on the high side, leading to resource waste. There is therefore a potential for reducing the waste through better matching and/or improvement of the transmission system.

Key words: drilling rig drive system, tripping operation, diesel engine, power characteristic, detection device