Volcano powered petroleum boiler, no maintenance

[JohnFrancis]

A magma powered petroleum boiler tutorial *edit No space material required. Two variants one for each magma volcano type, they are efficient enough to run on any volcano of the chosen type. Regular volcano boiler consumes 629 g/s of volcanic magma. Minor volcano boiler consumes 316g/s of volcanic magma.

Below gif shows how the spent magma is extracted automatically.

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Junksteel]

"No maintenance, no digging, ...no spacial materials required" gotta love that.

[JohnFrancis]

27 minutes ago, Junksteel said:

"No maintenance, no digging, ...no spacial materials required" gotta love that.

I need to get you to start writing my intro's, that would have been a way better way to start it.

[Draxbear]

I love the maintenance access you’ve tucked in there too. Many thanks for this and past tutorials!

[Gus Smedstad]

Really nice. In my game I built your earlier 10kg/s petroleum boiler, using a thermium aquatuner instead of a volcano. I had a volcano, but I didn't feel a strong need for an efficient boiler until I'd already obtained thermium.

My main difficulty to your earlier design was that it's pretty large. The gold cost didn't bother me so much as the sheer amount of space I had to devote to it.

Also, I put a shut off sensor into it. The spaces in the counter-flow heat exchanger are two high, and I put a hydro sensor into one of the last segments so it shut off oil flow when it got nearly full. I wasn't using anywhere near the full 10kg/s of petroleum when I built it, so it naturally backed up.

From your remarks in this video I gather this version simply develops really high pressures in the final boiler chamber if you don't pump out the finished petroleum as fast as it's produced. You mentioned something about pressure damage. I don't know the rules for that, I've never built anything that produced really high liquid pressures.

[JohnFrancis]

The last design was a bit big alright, I tried to make this one more mid game friendly and compact. I never though of the need to not burn the petroleum, my thinking was barring a backup tank in case of high demand you should be burning it all straight away. Oil wells -> crude -> petroleum -> burn for power and P-water. This is water positive, in my head if you are not running the boiler constantly you are effectively wasting water. I make 30 min tutorials and still manage to leave out much 

The over pressure was being caused by large amounts of crude collecting in the boiler just as the magma was running out of heat. About 2 tiles of it *Edit you can see it in the gif. When the fresh hot magma showed up the crude would convert almost instantly, crude takes up less space than petroleum. So for a couple of ticks i had two tiles of petroleum with a density about 100kg greater than standard. This damaged the wall tile beside them. By spitting our the magma a little earlier (hotter) less crude accumulated and no pressure damage.

[zimpixa]

I've created boiler based on your previous videos, mix of tame metal volcano (heat exchanger system, metal collector - Im manually remove cooled off metal once every volcano cycle) with oil boiler (preheat system).

I might extend preheat room, as my max output was 6kg/s constantly and sometimes Im getting overpressure damage, even with termo and hydrosensor that detects crude oil gathering in final room. I might get more than 7.5kg/s during activity time, but then boiler stops working few cycles after inactivity kicks in. I also doubt that metal volcano generates enough heat to maintain full capacity without like You said half map warm-up preheat system

[Zarquan]

This is a nice build.  Looks quite effective and pre-space, which is nice.  However, I feel that it could be improved on two points:

1. I feel this could be more efficient on magma consumption.  As far as I can tell, you have a lot of extremely hot igneous rock that could have its heat transferred to the crude oil.  I could be wrong, but I think this consumes more magma than the typical volcano produces.
2. If you could use smaller amounts of magma more frequently, you could avoid losing mass on digging with the autodigger.  If you have a small enough mass of magma on the tile, it won't form a diggable block.  Then you get all the mass and use the igneous rock to help burn the crude oil and can burn more crude oil per kg magma.  There is a lot of boiling potential in 1400 C igneous rock.

[JohnFrancis]

2 hours ago, Zarquan said:

However, I feel that it could be improved on two points

1. I checked the map database there is no regular or minor volcano with production rates lower than the consumption rates of the designs. I stress tested the minor variant on a volcano that was within 7 g/s of the weakest volcano on record. Result was more magma accumulated in the tank.

2. A rock tile will not form at 1472 kg of magma or less. I tried using a debris powered design however heat was being lost somewhere. It worked out about 700 g/s for the debris design and only 560 g/s for an equivalent rock tile forming design. So I scrapped the debris one, which was annoying it was a beautiful little number, already had a tutorial done up on it before the math's was proven all wrong by stress testing.

The waste is being spit our at between 428C - 433C and I could use that to preheat the crude oil before it enters the counterflow theoretically. The problem would be the debris is spit out at big intervals meaning uneven heating. Will do some testing I have an idea that should be very simple to implement on the current design.

One final note, the kDTU numbers don't work out when using petroleum boilers. I tried several designs and according to the numbers they should have consumed minimal magma. With in game testing they all broke down.The math's tells me for the above minor variant I only need 169000 kDTU a second however the magma debris output says I'm burning 410436 kDTU in magma. 242% of what the calculator is telling me, The debris versions were even worse. The map save is attached you can test it yourself. This game is a harsh mistress, she laughs at all our plans. (Please note, kDTU testing was performed on fully heated up builds, at least 3 readings were taken from each designs and all readings were within 1% variance)

[LordAizen]

What's the purpose of oxygen in the heat exchanger?

[0xFADE]

Very clean.  Nice.  Maybe a bit large but that isn't really a problem.

The gap between the diamond and the door with the shift plate is interesting.  I wouldn't have expected that to work.  I would have used another diamond tile to the door.

[OxCD]

@JohnFrancis First of all thanks for this very nice setup. I've decided to use it on my survival game.

I've added clock trigger to be able to manually stop the process if needed. Also 2 others triggers, that can also stop the process, if the flow from somewhere isn't continuous. A element sensor to detect if there's oil shortage for any reason. and a liquid sensor to detect if there's magma shortage (still not analyzed the volcano, as I'm waiting to finish the setup before to dig it).

Aslo, I've added a pH²O pool just below, for the conveyor system to sweep igneous rock. Then rails are travelling into this cold pool, and some gold metal tile than should also faster the heat exchange. For the igneous to come out of this as cold as possible. Everyone confirm that sweeper are working underwater, right ? ^^ I've never tried.

The pool is ready, i'm waiting for me to be sure about the whole setup before to fill it.

Aaaaand also, and that become a bit more tricky for me, I'm going to use the same method for melting my thousand tons of regolith. So, on the other side, I've established exactly the same kind of dropper. The regolith should melt into the magma, brigging the temp below the solidification point. But I've indeed some worries before to launch the setup.

Firstly, when the magma will solidify, I'm not sure regolith falling from above will continue to bring the igneous rock temperature down. It will lay on the top of the blocks, do you think it's enough to exchange the heat ? I've added, behind, diamond tempshift plates. Do you think it will help ?

The regolith which will stand on the top of the blocks, could be swept into the pool, then sent back to the dropper,in my idea.

I was also thinking about letting O² into the melting zone. Maybe it could help heat transfer, but then the O² will probably sneak above, into the volcano room.

Last worry, at the moment, if to much regolith melt into the magma, I think that could lead the magma basin to overflow, and burn my robo-miner, and my oil puddle to evaporate.

So much worry before to start this out. If someone have some advices, or thoughts, that could help me to focus and to take as better decision as possible ^^

 

And yes, everything is just above my main base ahah. Was not planning to find a volcano so close, neither to build a setup that imposing. Good, I've plenty ceramic to use anyway ! hehe

 

EDIT : and yes it's a big mess around. Many stuff, passive, or futur. I'm gonna clean and try to make it look good, I promise ! ^^

EDIT 2 : I know also, on the screenshot one tile is missing on the right magma corridor, and robo-miners (and doors behind) are missing. It's gonna wait for tomorrow

[JohnFrancis]

Sweepers work under water.
Debris only exchanges heat with the tile directly beneath it, temp shift plates wont help unfortunately.
That O2 will sneak into the dropper chamber but should not get into the magma storage chamber, the one liquid or gas per tile rule will stop it. However it could cause you oil liquid lock to boil.
I have never tried regolith melting I just shoved it into shove voles, so I can't give you any decent advice. But I can say you have built the Regular volcano petroleum boiler variant, are you sure that volcano is not a minor one? Even if it is a regular volcano you are going to be putting quite a strain on magma production to run both a petroleum boiler and a regolith melter, it will most likely not produce enough magma.

One final note the Polluted water will off gas polluted oxygen, how are you going to stop it getting into your magma area's?

[OxCD]

Many thanks for those advices

It says only Volcano when i point it, so I think it's the regular one.

I've already removed the O2 anyway. Pretty sure it will not help heat transfer I want as gases don't mix with liquid nor solid. Also i've removed the ore dropper, and just set a rail loop, as wolframite rail helps heat transfer a lot. And it will avoid regolith debris falling into the cooling chamber. 

A bit after my message here, the issue with offgassing pH2O pops-up to me... I've plenty of cold pH2O, that's why I thought about this first, but for sure I'll have to re-think it...

Anyway many thanks again for your primary idea and setup, now it's my time to brainstorm my extended version

[OxCD]

@JohnFrancis Volcano average output : 866,66g/s. Not that much, huh ?

Can I think in adding a valve to the oil input, to reduce the magma uses for boiling it ?

In your setup, did you find any oil input threshold for the system to work as expected ?

[JohnFrancis]

According to my notes the regular volcano design you are using consumes 629 g/s of magma assuming the incoming crude is at least 80C, so you do have some magma to spare. If you are sending in less than 10kg/s you would of course consume less. Theoretically if you pre heat the crude to a higher temp it should consume less but have not tested this. In previous designs I ran them as low as 3333g/s and they kept functioning as intended, BUT if you hard drop it from 10000g/s to 3333g/s some of the crude would boil in the pipes during the change over. You had to drop the input gradually wait a few min for system to stabilize and then repeat. I dropped it about 2000g at a time if memory serves.

[OxCD]

@JohnFrancis Just to keep you informed, and anyone who does want to try my silly idea to melt the regolith, that's it's not gonna work this way ^^ Melting t° for rego is equal to solidification t° for magma, and in this case, it was mostly my problem. Change my way anyway, going to feed shove vole with those tons.

About the petroleum boiler itself, thanks a lot to you. You're a master, this is working really well !

Nevertheless, I've also added a cold petroleum pool to extract igneous. And, against all odds, its seems to be a success, this ^^

Pool t° is set to 10° approx, igneous is going out at 25° approx.

I'm also cooling a bit the outgoing petroleum, to control better the heat of my map. Clearly dispensable, but the cooling system for the pool was there, so I kill two birds with one stone.

Have also added some automation. A manual clock, to stop doors system, and crude oil income. A liquid pressure level for the magma, to stop the crude oil shut-off (if magma shortage), and a liquid element sensor, to stop doors system (if oil shortage)

@kurgut may also be interested into this

 

[OxCD]

@JohnFrancis For your information, after many hundreds of cycles, one issue appear.

It seems that oil is cooking at very rare occasion inside the pipe, close to the very end. As you can see, some golden pipes are a bit damaged.

I've changed the set t° on the sensor at 401°C instead of 402°

I could suspect insulated obsidian to interfer a bit... Because the petro is a bit more hotter than it should be following the t° sensor.

I will keep you in touch.

[JohnFrancis]

Have you reduced the flow sharply below 10kg/s? If you drop it really quickly from 10 to say 6kg then you can get some overheating during the transition. Additionally if you go below 6 the counter flow can be to efficient in which case you should replace the last few pipe segments (the overheated ones) with insulated pipe to decrease the efficiency.

[OxCD]

4 minutes ago, JohnFrancis said:

Have you reduced the flow sharply below 10kg/s? If you drop it really quickly from 10 to say 6kg then you can get some overheating during the transition. Additionally if you go below 6 the counter flow can be to efficient in which case you should replace the last few pipe segments (the overheated ones) with insulated pipe to decrease the efficiency.

I think you spot it on. I never went above 2kg/s as I would not be able to use all that petro (my oil to nat gas cooker is doing a wonderful job). Actually, I'm at 1800kg/s.

Concerning any flow changes I applied, I let it run for 10 cycles at least before to change it again.

[necromenta]

God!! My brain... Can someone explain this in a way that actually doesn't sound like I need to be a programmer to play the game?

[Angpaur]

You can avoid using robominer if you don't let magma to exceed 1500kg in a tile. It will then solidify into a chunk.

Here is how it works in my oil boiler:

You can then use the chunks for additional heating. Most of the heat is still in the igneous rock after magma solidifies.

[JohnFrancis]

3 hours ago, Angpaur said:

You can avoid using robominer if you don't let magma to exceed 1500kg in a tile. It will then solidify into a chunk.

How do you find the magma efficiency? I tried to use a similar system but I found some of the heat would disappear so it ended up going with the solid tile method. I should point out I was squeezing the heat out by trapping the debris in a steel door so that may have affected the results. 

[Angpaur]

6 hours ago, JohnFrancis said:

How do you find the magma efficiency?

Not sure what you mean but oil boiling efficiency is really close to 10kg/s on average.

In my design igneous rock chunks are transported on rails and go behind petroleum directly. The chunks are being looped until rocks temperature drops to 600C and then it is sent to heat up steam in turbine.

Magma has only small portion of total heat so you can't just rely on magma itself. Most of the heat is still there in igneous rock.

6 hours ago, JohnFrancis said:

I should point out I was squeezing the heat out by trapping the debris in a steel door so that may have affected the results. 

This method uses slower way to conduct heat following equation:  Debris on a Tile: q = klow * dT * 12.5

If you put debris on rails then different equation is followed for heat transfer: Debris in a Tile: q = klow * dT * 200, which has much better multiplier and allows more heat to be transferred.