Cypher Systems

Steven A Beard

John A Carlin

William G Mesch

Randall D Thompson

Tracy R Stephens

David G Feldman

J Bart Henthorn

Joseph R Skovrinski

A portable oilfield fluid management system and method provides display information concerning fluid status and includes a plurality of local sensing units which can be selectively attached in any order to a plurality of different storage tanks having different sizes, shapes and capacities located in different oilfields. A plurality of cable segments each of equal predetermined length are used to interconnect the attached local sensing units to each other in a serial connection and a central touch activated monitor located away from the local sensing units is interconnected to the first attached local sensing unit by means of an elongated cable. Because the local storage units which function to measure the level of fluid in the storage tanks can be attached to the storage tanks in any order, the central touch-activated monitor autoconfigures the local sensing units by assigning binary addresses to each attached local sensing unit. The first attached local sensing unit when it receives its binary address from the central touch activated monitor, stores that binary address in its random access memory and interconnects an upstream data transmission path to enable the central monitor to assign the next binary address to the next attached local sensing unit. This process is repeated for each attached and interconnected local sensing unit until all local sensing units have a binary address. The system autoconfigures the local sensing units for each different oilfield location.

Portable oilfield fluid management system and method

A storage tank level monitoring apparatus and method for determining fluid levels in a storage tank. The apparatus of the present invention includes a magnet coated with rubber for holding a pivotally mounted housing to the interior of the storage tank and an ultrasonic transducer contained within the housing for generating acoustic pulses and for receiving reflections of the acoustic pulses for producing an analog signal proportional to the reflections, a string carrying a number of reference disks vertically oriented below the housing for producing a series of reflected acoustic signals from each reference disk, and a processor connected to the ultrasonic transducer for activating the transducer and for analyzing the reflected pulses for calibrating the apparatus for environmental changes in the atmosphere above the stored fluid and for determining the level of the stored fluid in the tank. The method of the present invention includes the steps of receiving reflected pulses from each reference disk only during certain window time intervals and to calibrate the system by adjusting for environmental conditions between the transducer and the fluid level.

Storage tank level monitoring apparatus and method therefor

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Aurora, CO, United States of America

Steven A Beard