Tool is made of high temperature alloy and weighs 45 pounds.
Skids are mounted on an 18 wheel trailer and support redundant valves, regulators, pumps, etc for feeding H2O, GOX, and CH4 to the BlackBird™.
Computer systems consists of 5 CPU’s, rack mounted, with ~200 sensors leading to thermocouples. The 5 monitors are 42- 46″ which allows tracking the total closed loop setup. This will allow multiple screens to be open to monitor each skid (tracking the oxygen, nat. gas, nitrogen, H2O, etc.). There are 96 channels comprised of leads to the pressure transducers, flow meters, thermocouples, valves, glow plug igniter, etc. The second set of 100 sensors/channels is for running a second system simultaneously.
The computer system is a closed loop system running the variable speed drives, regulators, flow rates, temperatures, etc. If it senses an outage it will automatically switch to a back-up system. There is a redundant part/hose/supply source for every component. There’s about a 45 minute – 1 hour of run time of back up gases to allow the crew to repair the failed part before needing to shut down. Therefore the system is designed to run 24/7.
ACES’ proprietary software is three components integrated into a single cohesive application that covers rapid automated testing, data acquisition and control: The computer system was built by Bloomy Controls, with a specialized application that is integrated with National Instruments-LabVIEW DAQ and is coded by Emprise Corporation.
