Make petroleum with midgame

[Sliceofpow]

Is it possible to make an oil boiler with another evaporatable liquid to pressurize the aquatuner room?

[Zarquan]

No, even steel aquatuners will overheat before boiling the crude oil.

You can use lava as your heat source though, but you have to be careful.

[jlarner]

If you create a couple of tons of petroleum with an Oil Refinery, it's definitely possible to heat it to higher than 400 degrees with a Metal Refinery, and use that hot petroleum to heat crude oil past 400 degrees to make an early/mid-game oil boiler.

[Yunru]

36 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

No, even steel aquatuners will overheat before boiling the crude oil.

You can use lava as your heat source though, but you have to be careful.

Careful? You just need a thermal sensor and some mechanised airlocks between metal tiles.

[beowulf2010]

2 minutes ago, Yunru said:

Careful? You just need a thermal sensor and some mechanised airlocks between metal tiles.

I would assume the being careful part is probably about the actual building of it (corner builds) and maintaining vacuum while doing so to not cook the dupes. 

[Yunru]

Just now, beowulf2010 said:

I would assume the being careful part is probably about the actual building of it (corner builds) and maintaining vacuum while doing so to not cook the dupes. 

Bah! Let 'em burn!

[Saturnus]

You can make a petroleum duplicator fairly early game though.

[MorsDux]

1 hour ago, jlarner said:

If you create a couple of tons of petroleum with an Oil Refinery, it's definitely possible to heat it to higher than 400 degrees with a Metal Refinery, and use that hot petroleum to heat crude oil past 400 degrees to make an early/mid-game oil boiler.

This is quite the good idea. I always use liquid reservoirs to help control temperature but in this case it would overheat. Do you have a solution set up for this?

[Zarquan]

3 hours ago, Yunru said:

Careful? You just need a thermal sensor and some mechanised airlocks between metal tiles.

Yes, and if you set it up wrong, you get sour gas that you can't work with.

[Yunru]

14 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

Yes, and if you set it up wrong, you get sour gas that you can't work with.

???

Literally the only way to set it up wrong is to not configure the temperature sensor. Open doors in a gas-less environment transfer no heat. The heat will never go above what you set it at.

[Zarquan]

3 minutes ago, Yunru said:

???

Literally the only way to set it up wrong is to not configure the temperature sensor. Open doors in a gas-less environment transfer no heat. The heat will never go above what you set it at.

Messing up your temp sensor is one way you can mess it up, but there are others.  A more common way is accidentally not having a vacuum.  Or by creating a thermal connection to the lava that circumvents the doors.  Your dupe's exosuits can break/melt if you accidentally let your dupes walk in the lava.  I just think that it is a good idea to be careful around lava, because if you do mess it up, it is almost impossible to clean up.

[Yunru]

Just now, Zarquan said:

Messing up your temp sensor is one way you can mess it up, but there are others.  A more common way is accidentally not having a vacuum.  Or by creating a thermal connection to the lava that circumvents the doors.

There's no way to not have a vacuum, the door creates the vacuum.

And if you manage to accidentally create a thermal connection to lava... well, it's not quite a Darwin award.

 

[Zarquan]

13 minutes ago, Yunru said:

There's no way to not have a vacuum, the door creates the vacuum.

And if you manage to accidentally create a thermal connection to lava... well, it's not quite a Darwin award.

 

What if you made those insulated tiles out of sedementary rock?  That's going to melt and spill lava.  Plus, how would you get the lava surrounded by insulated tiles without exposing dupes to lava?  By being careful.  Even in exosuits, the lava is dangerous to dupes.  The point is, it might be easy if you know exactly what you are doing, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful.

Also, it would be very easy to not have a vaccum, as you could have one door in the middle (like many builds do) rather than two doors.  If you set it up wrong, or even set it up right and replace a tile, the vacuum could be broken. 

Plus, if you had more than 1 tile deep lava, (as a survival build probably would) then this wouldn't last too long, as the lava level can decrease due to it solidifying.  You want a bit of good conductive gas in the bottom chamber to keep it running, like phosphorous or hydrogen.

Also, something that people sometimes forget, is that bridges create thermal connections.  If you had other automation in the area, you could accidentally create a thermal connection from bridging your automation over the door automation.  An easy mistake if you are not careful.

[Yunru]

3 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

What if you made those insulated tiles out of sedementary rock?  That's going to melt and spill lava.  Plus, how would you get the lava surrounded by insulated tiles without exposing dupes to lava? 

You wouldn't? I only did it so that the lava would stay in place without having to head down to the bottom of the map.

And no, it still wouldn't be "very easy" to not have a vacuum. You'd have to intentionally build it without a vacuum. Want only one door? You'd only build the transmission part 2 wide, done.

[Zarquan]

7 minutes ago, Yunru said:

You wouldn't? I only did it so that the lava would stay in place without having to head down to the bottom of the map.

And no, it still wouldn't be "very easy" to not have a vacuum. You'd have to intentionally build it without a vacuum.

A lot of newer players are likely to not know or care too much about the difference between the materials yet or not even know that sedimentary rock has the lowest melting point.

It is extremely easy to break a vacuum if you aren't careful.  If you have a vacuum chamber and change a tile from tile to insulated tile, the tile will vanish for a short period of time when the construction is complete, letting in gas.  That would be unintentionally making it a vacuum.  You could also have it built, but have a flatulent dupe who went and picked something up from inside.  Just because you can build it doesn't mean everyone can. 

I am confused as to why you are criticizing me for recommending that people be careful around lava, especially if they don't necessarily know what they are doing.  That kind of heat can destroy a colony very quickly with no recourse if it isn't build with the correct protections (i.e. if they weren't careful).

[Yunru]

1 minute ago, Zarquan said:

It is extremely easy to break a vacuum if you aren't careful.  If you have a vacuum chamber and change a tile from tile to insulated tile, the tile will vanish for a short period of time when the construction is complete, letting in gas.

The vacuum chamber is caused by the door though, the lack of vacuum would last right until the door closes and the gas gets deleted.

[Zarquan]

30 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

Also, it would be very easy to not have a vaccum, as you could have one door in the middle (like many builds do) rather than two doors.  If you set it up wrong, or even set it up right and replace a tile, the vacuum could be broken. 

18 minutes ago, Yunru said:

The vacuum chamber is caused by the door though, the lack of vacuum would last right until the door closes and the gas gets deleted.

Someone might want to reduce exposure to the lava, so they may spend less time actually building the doors.  Two doors are unnecessary in your build.  I find this style to be better due to it being cheaper, which can be a major concern in the mid game.  It also contains some phosphorous that you need to be careful about, but is necessary for this working for a longer period of time.  (I actually forgot the thermal sensor because I just went in to debug and build this really quick, my design in my actual game has a thermal sensor and a drain where the petroleum is cooled).

Also, another note, those metal tiles at the bottom had better not be made out of gold.  That would be an easy mistake if you aren't careful.

Your machine is also incomplete (as is mine), as you can't use 400 C petroleum without space age materials.  You need to cool it, which is a process that you need to be careful with if you want it to work correctly.

If you didn't notice, the keyword is careful.  Careful doesn't imply that it's impossible or even hard.  It implies that if you do mess up, it can lead to problems that can be really hard to fix. 

4 hours ago, MorsDux said:

This is quite the good idea. I always use liquid reservoirs to help control temperature but in this case it would overheat. Do you have a solution set up for this?

Keep the liquid reservoir in a vacuum on airflow/mesh tiles.  The contents do not interact with the reservoir.

[MorsDux]

7 hours ago, Zarquan said:

Someone might want to reduce exposure to the lava, so they may spend less time actually building the doors.  Two doors are unnecessary in your build.  I find this style to be better due to it being cheaper, which can be a major concern in the mid game.  It also contains some phosphorous that you need to be careful about, but is necessary for this working for a longer period of time.  (I actually forgot the thermal sensor because I just went in to debug and build this really quick, my design in my actual game has a thermal sensor and a drain where the petroleum is cooled).

Also, another note, those metal tiles at the bottom had better not be made out of gold.  That would be an easy mistake if you aren't careful.

Your machine is also incomplete (as is mine), as you can't use 400 C petroleum without space age materials.  You need to cool it, which is a process that you need to be careful with if you want it to work correctly.

If you didn't notice, the keyword is careful.  Careful doesn't imply that it's impossible or even hard.  It implies that if you do mess up, it can lead to problems that can be really hard to fix. 

Keep the liquid reservoir in a vacuum on airflow/mesh tiles.  The contents do not interact with the reservoir.

Thx for the tip, i will use this!

[jlarner]

13 hours ago, MorsDux said:

This is quite the good idea. I always use liquid reservoirs to help control temperature but in this case it would overheat. Do you have a solution set up for this?

As @Zarquan pointed out, you can keep the reservoir in a vacuum, and use a mesh/airflow tile as the left one under the reservoir.  If a vacuum is too much work, a ceramic insulation tile in that position is almost as good.

The difficult bit of getting this plan to work is cooling the resulting petroleum enough to be able to pump it with a steel pump (which will overheat at 275 degrees C).  Most boilers set up some sort of heat exchange between incoming crude oil and outgoing petroleum which reduces the amount of heat you need to apply to the oil and makes the petroleum pumpable.  The simplest way to do this is just to mix cold crude with just-boiled petroleum, which will result in a petroleum-oil mix which is just pumpable (but will require separating so that you can boil the crude).  More complex methods set up heat exchange chambers where crude in radiant pipes takes heat from 'free-flowing' petroleum - if you look around you can find lots of examples. Generally, the more complex the system, the easier and less error-prone it is to deal with, but the more difficult it is to set up (requiring space-materials or lots of refined metal).

[MorsDux]

1 hour ago, jlarner said:

As @Zarquan pointed out, you can keep the reservoir in a vacuum, and use a mesh/airflow tile as the left one under the reservoir.  If a vacuum is too much work, a ceramic insulation tile in that position is almost as good.

The difficult bit of getting this plan to work is cooling the resulting petroleum enough to be able to pump it with a steel pump (which will overheat at 275 degrees C).  Most boilers set up some sort of heat exchange between incoming crude oil and outgoing petroleum which reduces the amount of heat you need to apply to the oil and makes the petroleum pumpable.  The simplest way to do this is just to mix cold crude with just-boiled petroleum, which will result in a petroleum-oil mix which is just pumpable (but will require separating so that you can boil the crude).  More complex methods set up heat exchange chambers where crude in radiant pipes takes heat from 'free-flowing' petroleum - if you look around you can find lots of examples. Generally, the more complex the system, the easier and less error-prone it is to deal with, but the more difficult it is to set up (requiring space-materials or lots of refined metal).

 

I think i will drop tbe heated petroleum with opening floor (door) the drop the cooled petroleum lower again when cooled enough. 

[Yunru]

11 hours ago, Zarquan said:

Someone might want to reduce exposure to the lava, so they may spend less time actually building the doors.  Two doors are unnecessary in your build. 

Boom, one door, less work, and more foolproof.

[Zarquan]

4 hours ago, Yunru said:

Boom, one door, less work, and more foolproof.

That build has the hazard of hot abyssalite in the area that can turn your crude oil in to sour gas instantly.  Better be careful while building it.

I don't understand why the idea of being careful around lava is offensive to you.  Telling someone to be careful doesn't mean the task is impossible or not worth it or even difficult.  It just says there are high stakes if they were to mess up and they should watch out for unexpected things, especially if they haven't built one before.

I am also not saying there is anything wrong with your builds.  I am saying a newer player may have problems if they try to build it, so they should be careful.

[lee1026]

5 hours ago, Yunru said:

Boom, one door, less work, and more foolproof.

Obviously not a survival build.

 

Magma also have the unfortunate property of liking to expand when you crack the seal, make life dealing with them difficult.

 

To make the life of your particular build more problematic, there are no dupe access to let you put the metal plates there to begin with. In the time that it will take dupes to actually build those plates, heatstroke become a danger to dupes, even in exosuits. 

 

If you want to say that it is easy, show us a survival build. As things stand, being careful is very good advice, because you yourself managed to come up with a build that blow up in the face of anyone who would actually try such a thing, along with a lot of less-than-obvious details that you have to get right or else you face disaster.

 

If a new-ish player were to try this, he/she will quickly have everything melted and impossible to clean up, because most metals will melt at these temperatures. Not a problem if you use steel, but steel is hardly a common commodity in the mid-game.

[Yunru]

3 hours ago, lee1026 said:

If you want to say that it is easy, show us a survival build.

Same build, just plugged into a volcano instead.

[lee1026]

Now we are assuming that you roll a volcano?

 

Volcano handling tends to be tricky in general, and there is a lot of ways to do it wrong.