Link to proiflo PF1 Article - CC Technology Lubrication Division

■ Installation of a CC Technology
proflo divider block monitor on a
compressor in Hanover Company’s
Midland, Texas, revamp shop.
New Lube System Monitoring Device Provides
Maximum Protection For Compressor Systems
CC Technology’s proflo Device Provides Shutdown Protection, Monitors Entire
Divider Block System Operation, has Trending and Remote Monitoring Capabilities
By Ellen Hopkins
There are nagging questions
in the minds of compressor
manufacturers and operators
about the performance of divider
block lube systems on all their
compressors. Which ones are
over-lubricating and wasting oil,
which ones are under-lubricating
and creating wear in the cylinders
and packing, and — without
spending untold man-hours —
can it be determined if all the
cycle times are set according to
manufacturer’s recommendations
A new product on the market
answers all these questions
and more. Its inventor, Curtis
Roys of CC Technology (CCT)
in Midland, Texas, U.S.A., said
the proflo divider block monitor
puts a compressor operator’s
mind at ease. The new device
has drawn the attention of such
companies as Compressor Systems
Inc., Hanover Compression,
Production Operators Inc., Altronic
Inc., and American Millennium
Corporation Inc., all of
which have been prototype
testing the device.
“The proflo device gives
operators shutdown protection
and monitors the entire operation
of the divider block system,
with trending capabilities
never before possible,” said
Roys. “Trending of oil consumption
and divider block operation
is extremely important because
if a cylinder or packing shows
signs of wear, and the lube system
is operating according to
manufacturer’s specifications,
the important question to ask is,
‘what was the lubrication system
doing 30, 60 or 90 days ago’”
He said there are products in
the industry that can indicate
current operations, but if a compressor
has worn cylinders there
is no early detection product for
this problem. The operator might
suspect there is some type of
problem, but today’s equipment
can’t pinpoint precisely what
caused the worn piston rings,
cylinders or packing, and when
the problem occurred.
Roys said monitoring these
potential problems has plagued
the industry for years. Lubricator
pumps can be continually adjusted,
but if a pump is adjusted
incorrectly and not rechecked
for 60 days, the damage to the
components would have been
done. With the proflo device, the
number of cycles and amount
of oil used is logged continuously
allowing operators to
quickly notice variances. A year’s
worth of data are kept in memory.
Exact oil consumption —
down to 100th of a pint — is
stored in memory every 30 minutes
and can be instantly accessed
at the compressor site to
show an operator where and
when changes are occurring.
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COMPRESSORTech Two

■ Joseph Ashmore with
Hanover Company in Midland,
Texas, indicates where a proflo
unit has been mounted in a control
panel.
The cycle time of a divider
block is also tracked and trended
so the average cycle time each
30 minutes of operation can be
compared to the manufacturer’s
recommendation. Roys explained
that every divider block
system has a recommended cycle
time for determining correct
oil consumption — found on a
metal tag on top of the lube
box or furnished by the design
engineer — and every compressor
application is different.
Roys said manually changing
the cycle time correctly could
seemingly take forever.
“Operators who rely on current
no-flow devices must use a
stopwatch to time movement of
a visual indicator on the divider
block or a blinking light indicating
the cycle time of the divider
block system,” said Roys.
“With the proflo, the stopwatch
is built-in and visible via the LCD
readout. The operator can read
the cycle time on the display
screen, adjust the pump if necessary
until it reads the correct
cycle time, and then leave. It’s
that simple.”
If the proflo readout states the
cycle time is 15 seconds, Roys
said, and the operator knows
from the lube box that it should
be 20 seconds, the pump can
immediately be changed to affect
the compressor’s performance.
When a pump is manually
changed, the cycle time and oil
consumption history indicate
the time and date the change
occurred. Through tracking
these averages, operators can
determine problem causes and
prevent component failure.
Along with instant and average
divider block cycle time,
the same screen displays other
pertinent data such as compressor
run time, total divider block
cycles, low battery warning and
alarm time. Roys said the proflo
system could be installed on all
manufacturers’ divider block
systems. Retrofit to any divider
block takes about five minutes,
and Roys said it would work
with any operator’s analog control
system, PLC or digital control
panel. It can be mounted
anywhere on the divider block,
compressor frame, or in the
control panel.
Jim Billings, with Production
Operators Inc. (POI), recently
acquired by Universal Compressor,
said the initial testing of the
unit has been just what he
wanted.
“The proflo monitor has been
great for us and will probably
become a company standard,”
Billings said. “We will be using
proflo devices on PLC and non-
PLC units in the Farmington,
New Mexico, area. Every day
the operators can download
each unit’s data into our Palm
handheld devices and then
e-mail that data to the office
each night. This will save a
tremendous amount of paperwork
and time. The proflo system
is so reliable and accurate
that we are looking at adding
these to some of our units in
South America. Our business at
POI is to lease, operate and
maintain units for customers, so
this type of maintenance information
is very important to us.”
Total run time of the divider
block system is extremely important
as an indicator of anticipated
maintenance and is another
LCD displayed item. The
cycle time translates to exactly
how many times the piston has
gone back and forth. Roys said
if an operator knows a divider
block has close to two million
cycles — and the precise number
of divider block cycles is
another display item — it’s time
to schedule maintenance on the
lube system.
Among the proflo system’s
other features are field replaceable
AA batteries, which means
the proflo unit doesn’t have to
be replaced when the batteries
wear out. Many of the current
no-flow devices cost hundreds
of dollars and are unusable
when the batteries deplete.
These devices also have preset
alarm times. The proflo system
provides additional protection
with varying alarm times that
can be set from 30 seconds up
to four minutes. This means the
compressor will be shut down
on slow-flow if the lube pump
begins to fail and lube rates begin
to decline.
“Compare current no-flow
devices to a watch,” explained
Roys. “When your watch battery
runs down, you don’t throw
the whole watch away, you just
replace the battery. And that’s
exactly how the proflo works.
Batteries last approximately two
years. There is a low battery indicator
message on the LCD
display screen that flashes so
the operator knows when batteries
are at 20%. If the ‘LOW
BATT’ message is ignored and
the batteries reach 10%, the
proflo alarm will activate and
shut down the compressor as
a safeguard.”
Through its prototype testing
of the proflo system, The Hanover
Company has found that its
data downloading features will
provide indisputable proof regarding
a compressor’s operation.
“Hanover received a prototype
of the proflo device — the first
one in the Midland area — and
after six months of use, we consider
it to have some of the
greatest features available,” said
Jeff Hill, Hanover field foreman.
“We put the prototype on an
Ariel JGK4 that is driven by a
Waukesha 7042 GSI. The proflo
unit monitors the two cylinders
on the right bank and a DNFT
monitors the two cylinders on
the left bank. The proflo unit
was providing lots of data that
we needed, such as the amount
of oil used. All the data were
downloaded using a Palm device
and then uploaded to an
Excel spreadsheet that I e-mailed
to others in the company who
needed to see it.
“We had compressor problems
at one point and the unit
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COMPRESSORTech Two

■ Divider block lubrication data from
a compressor have been downloaded
to a Handspring Visor handheld device.The
Visor’s screen illustrates two
of the many data displays available
using Roys’ FFT (Fluid Flow Trending)
software. Left the screen displays the
half-hour oil consumption and cycle
time. Right by inputting cost per gallon
and tapping enter shows total lost
dollars from over lubrication.
shut down. It took quite a
while to determine what was
causing the problems because
the problems were on the left
bank. We knew they were on
the left bank because we had
all the proflo daily history, such
as the oil volume and operating
data, to prove that there was
no problem on the right bank.
It turned out that the DNFT on
the left bank had failed because
the battery wore down.
And that’s what shut the compressor
down.”
In addition to monitoring the
entire divider block system, the
proflo unit can be mounted to a
small mechanical dispensing
valve that provides operators a
means to monitor oil quantity
at a single injection point. He
said if a compressor cylinder or
packing is always having wear
problems, an operator could remove
the oil supply to the single
injection point, redirect the
oil flow through the dispensing
valve and then to the injection
point. The results will indicate
whether the cylinder wear is attributable
to a failing lube pump
or the divider block. In other
words, Roys said, the resulting
historical data will help an operator
determine if the amount of
oil injected into the lube point
is too little or too much.
Operators can set minimum
and maximum acceptable rates
for lubrication and the proflo system’s
FFT (Fluid Flow Trending)
software — developed by
Roys — indicates when these
levels have been reached. For
example, an operator might set
an over-lubrication rate of 25%
and set an under-lubrication
rate of 10%. Through historical
trending, proflo software will
research the past year’s database
for each compressor and
reveal which days have gone
beyond those parameters. Specifically,
the report will indicate
what the oil consumption was
on each of those dates and what
it should have been. Operators
can easily see variances from
recommended oil consumption
and from suggested cycle times.
“Oil consumption for rental
companies and compression
operators can total as much as
35% of bottom-line operating
costs,” said Roys. “The proflo
trending reports let operators
know the dollar amount of
wasted oil consumption or
why the compressor rings,
pistons, cylinders and packing
are worn and why parts have
been replaced.”
All proflo historical trending
data begins with day one. Roys
described a compressor that
started April 26, 2001, at 10 a.m.
“By tapping into this compressor’s
history, a user can see
how many hours it ran that first
day — 14 hours — and every
day since. The proflo history reveals
that this particular compressor
averaged 14.2 pints of
oil for that day, the total divider
block cycles were 3414, and
the average cycle time was 18
seconds. An operator can view
all these data in 30-minute increments
for a full year, and then
download them to a spreadsheet
program that provides
data trending. The software
also tells the operator when the
compressor was shutdown and
restarted.”
Actual data can be downloaded
from the proflo system
into any handheld device with
the Palm operating system, including
Handspring Visor and
Palm Pilot brands. FFT software
is stored in the handheld device
to provide compilation and
organization of the proflo data.
When an operator wants to
know how a particular lube system
has been operating, the
compressor ID and location
can be entered into the Palm
device — which holds 50 compressors
in memory — and that
compressor’s most recent data
can be downloaded to the
Palm device by Irda (infrared)
wireless transfer.
“It’s as simple as holding the
Palm device in front of the
proflo unit and pushing a button
to download stored information,”
Roys said. “The data
are stored in EEPROM (Electrical
Erasable Programmable
Read Only Memory), and never
lost because of battery failure
or unit malfunction.”
He added that the memory
cannot be accidentally erased.
Only when a compressor is
completely overhauled would
the memory be purposefully reset
to zero. When the data are
uploaded to a PC, a conversion
program enables the Palm files
to be converted to Excel format
for trending and graphing. Roys
said his Excel conversion software
has been repeatedly
tested during 2001.
“I have units running over the
last six months and there have
been no failures,” Roys said.
“The world’s largest compressor
manufacturer has been testing
proflo divider block monitors on
some of its units, and Altronic,
Inc. has been working with us
to verify the proflo will communicate
with its products.”
Lanny Slater of Altronic, said,
“The efforts of Altronic will ensure
that the proflo system will
work with all Altronic annunciators
and “DE” Series products,
and that the integrated products
will communicate all gathered
information through the Altronic
Compressorwatch wireless
communication system.”
Wireless communications
will be enhanced during the
fourth quarter of this year when
Roys will introduce, and have
available for operators, the
JULY-AUGUST 2001
COMPRESSORTech Two

“proflo 2 — Rs 485” model.
This wireless link communicates
with all digital control panels to
immediately notify an operator
about under- or over-lubrication,
as well as provide all the proflo
data readings. The proflo 2 system
will use full wireless communications
to enable an operator
to check a compressor’s
divider block system via website
from anywhere in the world.
It will be especially applicable
for remote compressors. If overor
under-lubrication parameters
are exceeded, a warning will
be issued and the operator notified
by pager, cell phone and
e-mail.
American Millennium
Corporation’s (AMCi) Sentry TM , a
stand-alone satellite callout system,
interfaces with the proflo 1
and 2 systems to send alarm
and notification messages. The
messages are sent in real time to
the satellite, and then to a custom-designed
web site for
each customer.
Stephen Watwood, AMCi
■ Jim Billings with
Production Operators
Inc., tests a proflo system,
an Allen Bradley
PLC and an Altronic annunciator.
chairman and vice president of
business development said,
“AMCi immediately saw the significant
impact of the proflo on
the oil and gas industry.
Combining the Sentry with the
proflo system creates a simple
and inexpensive solution for
protecting the compressor and
communicating the operation of
the divider block system to the
customer. The combination not
only alarms when the lubrication
system fails, but with its ability
to sense the running condition
of the compressor at the same
time, the system will send out a
critical alarm to the customers
telling them that their compressor
is running with no lubrication.
This type of protection is
not available in the industry today.”
Also new to the industry and
currently being tested, is Roys’
chemical version of the proflo
system. By monitoring the
chemical flow on the discharge
side of the pump, this version
will assure well operators and
treatment companies how much
of a chemical was actually used.
Along with inventing new
products specific to compressor
divider block systems, Roys has
been instrumental for years in
training compressor personnel
on how to avoid many of the
pitfalls in the operation and
maintenance of divider block
systems. With instruction in
mind, Roys said users of the
proflo system will receive a full
color brochure that explains
step-by-step operation, wiring
and installation. He said proflo
production units will begin
shipping by August 1 st , and he
is actively searching for worldwide
distributors. ■
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COMPRESSORTech Two