Stacked Tray Ball Dropper for Subterranean Fracking Operations
AssigneeBaker Hughes Incorporated
InventorJay J. Hunt
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A ball dropper has a stack of trays that have solid portions for supporting a ball and open portions to allow a ball to pass through a tray. Fixed barriers limit the travel of the ball with the rotating tray to allow the ball to become unsupported so that it can be caught on the tray below. A stepper motor precisely makes the required incremental rotation to allow the addition of the next ball at the top. Once the trays are filled or the balls loaded are advanced such that the lead ball is on the last tray any further rotation will start to discharge the balls with each increment of rotation. The device is easy and cheap to fabricate and presents a reliable way to get jam free operation while having a housing that will tolerate the operating pressures in the wellbore.
Claims21
An apparatus for delivering multiple objects to a subterranean location, comprising:
- a housing having an inlet for loading the objects and an outlet for discharge of the objects;
- discrete supports for each of the objects in said housing, said supports operating in tandem for controlled sequential release of the objects from said housing.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.