Natural Gas Cooker without any space material

[Tenedas]

Hello there,

i've been lurking around this forum for almost an year by now yet this is my first post.

By now i've accumulated roughly 600 hours in the game and almost explored all the "challanges" available; yet natural gas cooking have always puzzled me. I've seen a lot of builds, especially the compact version of @Lifegrow but everyone always required some bits of space material.

So i've approached the problem from another point of view in order to take advantage of the natural gas during the game and not only in late stages.Furthermore since the process require extreme heating and cooling at the same time i've planned out the design so that the cooking facility and the cooling facility can be dislocated on the map ( i.e. cooking facility in the bottom where you can dig an hole in the abbissalite to reach magma and cooling facility near an AETN)

So, on the design:

Overall Design

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the design is split in two main facilities:

1. Cooking facility
2. Cooling facility

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The whole idea is to split the two phases and take advantage of the AETN to cool down the sour gas.

Cooking Facility

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The idea is simple: there are two stages for each iteration of the process:

1. heat crude oil
2. cool down the sour gas to non-space material temperature ( below 125*)

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to dictate the functioning of the system during these two phases i've used a memory toggle to detect when all the crude oil been transformed into sour gas. The system stops to intake crude oil from the outside and wait for the gas to cool down in the chamber. In the end, the top part of the automation determines with a simple combinatory network when all the sour gas have been pumped out and is ready to proceed for the next iteration. The crude oil starts to flow again in the facility and the hydro sensor will detect it making the doors triggers accordingly ( venting and cooling rooms get isolated and cooking room get connected) and the cycle repeats.

The Cooling rooms in this case use wheezwort so there's a thermo sensor safeguard to isolate them should the temperature raise above 80* to allow the plants to keep functioning.

To be noted that cooling and heating rooms in this design can be easy substituted (i.e. aquatuner room for the heating).

As last notice: all the atmosensors/hydrosensor are set "above 0" while the thermo sensor is set "below 115"

Cooling Facility

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For this facility the stages are two again:

1. there's enough gas to cool down in the room (  rightmost atmosensor above 20kg)
2. there's no gas in the room (leftmost atmosensore below 0

while the chamber stops/starts the intake of sour gas from the chamber the liquid pump use an igneous rock insulated pipe passing in the metal tile floor between the AETN and the cooling facility to keep the temperature low (it is important to keep the natural gas storage the closest possible to this facility)

once all the gas liquify and transferred the left most atmosensor activate the gas shut off allowing gas inside again.

Building in regular play through

i haven't got the time yet to actually build it in a regular game but i can see it easly doable and i'd like to share some of the stages i'm going to take, especially to build the two small cooling chambers which can be tricky

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Last notices:

• All the hydrogen rooms are 20kg per tile
• AETN room have two airflow tile in order to use the max cooling capacity(34 tiles) and extend the cooling surface to the cooling facility
• Insulated tiles are made out of igneous rock, all the automation/machinery/metal tiles are made out of gold.
• it is important to keep the facilities separated from the outside with a double insulation ( with vacuum in the middle) layer

Hope someone find it useful

 

[FiannaTiger]

Cool thanks that is a very cool solution to a oil boiler!

[Gus Smedstad]

Isn't the throughput for that going to be very, very low?

You boil the oil and then cool it to 115 in one chamber - probably not a good idea, generally you want to separate those two bits. That's 540 C -> 115 C, done only with wheezeworts. 435 degrees * 1.9 = 826 DTU/gram, and with 4 wheezeworts providing a total of 48 kDTU/s cooling, thats 48,000 / 826 = 58 g/s, not enough to run even a single natural gas generator. The AETN segment is a little better, 115 to -170, so 285 * 1.9 = 541 DTU/gram, so 80,000 / 541 = 147 g/s, if the first part could supply that much.

A large part of the problem is that it's doing brute force heating and cooling, no heat exchangers to, for example, use the cold outgoing natural gas to cool the sour gas, or use incoming crude oil to cool the sour gas and heat the crude oil.

If I were to do brute force cooling like this, I'd use steam turbines. And probably do it in one step, since there's no real need to pump the hot sour gas to a separate second cooling stage if you're not dealing with a fixed location like an AETN. Steam turbines are some 825 kDTU/s, so each turbine you use can cool 600 g/s of sour gas to -170 C.

Lifegrow's build is 1000 g/s. Partly because of the space materials, but that's only what makes it small. What makes it energy efficient is the two heat exchangers.

[Neotuck]

The need for space materials is for heating without using lava.  There are plenty of builds that use volcano heat for Nat gas production without space materials.

@Lifegrow showed us an alternative if we have a map with no volcanos

[Gus Smedstad]

I haven't seen a lot of oil -> sour gas -> natural gas conversions that don't use space materials. The ones I recall were prior to sour gas, when all you needed to do to convert oil to natural gas was sufficient heat.

I say that because heating's now only half of the challenge. Oh, sure, you wanted to cool the hot natural gas before, but not to -170 C. You don't absolutely need space materials to reach -170 C, but man, it's a huge pain without supercoolant.

EDIT: of course, that's why Tenedas is using an AETN. Your choices for -170 C prior to supercoolant are an AETN (easy, but low output), hydrogen in a thermoregulator, or liquid oxygen in an aquatuner. The latter two consume a lot of energy per DTU moved.

[Tenedas]

well partly right, but max efficiency wasn't really the goal of the design.

main goal was to achieve the natural gas cooking without space material

secondary goals:

• trying to stay low on energy consumption (no aquatuner and so on...) the whole build can most likely be run with a coal generator.
• modularity of the build splitting the transformation process
• reusability as it is designed the cooling and cooking chambers can easly be replaced late game with more efficient and energy demanding system or with space materials

at the moment in debug i'm getting around 80kg each 15/17 cycle but haven't counted it precisely honestly.

didn't want to criticize builds of other players, just wanted to share my solution since had a lot of fun doing it

in the end still i still consider quite good in relation to the goals i was trying to achieve, i can easly see me making it happen in a regular run by cycle 200 and forgetting about it harvesting natural gas instead of going for petroleum generator and generate tons of heat or having to setup complex cooling systems early game

 

[hackcasual]

25 minutes ago, Tenedas said:

trying to stay low on energy consumption (no aquatuner and so on...) the whole build can most likely be run with a coal generator.

With NatGas boiling you'll have tons of extra power, so especially with the constraints of no space materials, why constrain yourself further? A simple exchanger to cool the sourgas below 550, followed by a petroleum filled aquatuner will mean your AETN only has to cool 110 degrees rather than nearly 300.

[Gus Smedstad]

I'd estimate the average energy usage of that thing as under 40 watts, overall, mainly because the througput's very low. Mostly I'm looking at the gas pumps (including the gas pump you'd need to move the natural gas, which is not shown), and assuming only about a 6% duty cycle, due to low throughput. Net power output's about 490 watts, or 760 if you boost generator output with engineering. You're of course limited to one per AETN, and you don't get many AETNs.

It's kind of marginal compared to just using the magma to run a steam generator. You get 800 watts for the same heat (809 kDTU/s for heating oil from 80 C to 540 C), and a much simpler, setup, but no polluted water or carbon dioxide byproducts.

As I said in a similar thread recently, I bet you could get far better conversion of heat to power if you included counter-flow heat exchangers, which don't require power, just flowing liquids and gasses. Get it up to, say, 90% thermal efficiency, meaning the 90% of the energy gets transferred from the sour gas to the output natural gas, and the wheezeworts and AETN don't have to do as much, which means your throughput goes up a factor of 10. With a corresponding increase in power output.

[Oozinator]

Mhh you can use the heat to make steam - steam engine..

[Tenedas]

11 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

I'd estimate the average energy usage of that thing as under 40 watts, overall, mainly because the througput's very low. Mostly I'm looking at the gas pumps (including the gas pump you'd need to move the natural gas, which is not shown), and assuming only about a 6% duty cycle, due to low throughput. Net power output's about 490 watts, or 760 if you boost generator output with engineering. You're of course limited to one per AETN, and you don't get many AETNs.

It's kind of marginal compared to just using the magma to run a steam generator. You get 800 watts for the same heat (809 kDTU/s for heating oil from 80 C to 540 C), and a much simpler, setup, but no polluted water or carbon dioxide byproducts.

As I said in a similar thread recently, I bet you could get far better conversion of heat to power if you included counter-flow heat exchangers, which don't require power, just flowing liquids and gasses. Get it up to, say, 90% thermal efficiency, meaning the 90% of the energy gets transferred from the sour gas to the output natural gas, and the wheezeworts and AETN don't have to do as much, which means your throughput goes up a factor of 10. With a corresponding increase in power output.

Ye i totally get the point ( trusting you on math since i'm not in the mood right now to even think about counter-proofing XD ). i will probably try to use the counterflow even if 4 pumps consume 960W and i'm not sure how much i can get away with. Looking at your maths i'm more than happy to setup 40w avarage consumption for 490W income by cycle 200ish with no maintence.

Furthermore i will get byproducts and i get what i like most, flexibility:

• i can catch up all the sour gas that sometimes generate by accident in the oil biome for example and send it straight away to the cooling room
• i can upgrade cooling chambers later on if i find my self in need
• i can dig up the exhausted magma once it cools down and replace with something that grants an higher output or helps me get rid of some unwanted heat

you get the idea, and yes i am aware is a very personal kind of playstyle and most people like to go straight to full efficiency complexity systems.

i will state it again: i KNOW that there are more efficient systems out there but you have to give yourself a challenge after you try everything.

Personally by the time i reach space and start getting the space materials i usually get bored about the run.Usually  there isn't very much stimulation anymore and a base around cycle 1000k of a regular game is very similar to debug mode anyway in terms of what you can do^^ (anything).

that's why i'm shifting to this kind of challanges/system, i'd like to be able to build a system in 30ish cycles in game when i'm still in need for power while that i can tap now and than rather than do it last when there isn't much purpose anymore.

 

[Gus Smedstad]

Yeah, I've said before that the game feels like it's over when you have your first hydrogen rocket run up and running reliably. At that point, there are no more obstacles to overcome. Which makes the actual benefits of a hydrogen rocket cargo hauler seem unimportant.

In my last colony, I started to build Lifegrow's sour gas converter. I didn't need it, I just wanted the accomplishment of seeing it working. I didn't finish because I ran out of clay for ceramic insulation, and didn't feel like waiting a hundred cycles or something to accumulate enough reed fiber to make enough Space Insulation.

I did find, however, that an oil boiler was extremely useful well before that point. Which is why I open threads like this, wondering if I'll see a design that's competitive with a good oil boiler.

It's not total energy output.  A single 10 kg/s oil boiler can gross 15kw of power, while costing 1.4kw if you use an aquatuner, or ~300 if you use magma (I'm not sure what the robominer in JohnFrancis's most recent build ends up using). A 1 kg/s natural gas converter can't gross more than 13 kw.

No, the main reason to build a sour gas converter, aside from "just because," is getting the most out of renewable oil sources. You get a lot more energy per kg of oil. 11 kw per 1 kg/s oil, vs. 1.5 kw from petroleum. 3 oil wells is 15kw gross with petroleum, or 110kw if converted to natural gas (!). You just need a lot of converters. Useful if you're into building megabases, though how you'd use 40kw or more I don't know.

[Tenedas]

Actually i've give it a full iteration run from crude oil to natural gas and it produced around 83kg of natural gas in 1 cycle and half.

the pump on top have been working all the time and the crude oil/methane liquid pumps worked totally for around 20 sec total.

240w *600 + 240W* 20 = 148,8 kW

and i got in natural gas the equivalent ( dividing by 90g/s used to produce 800w)

83kg that can generate 800* / ( 83kg / 90g/s) = 773kW

resulting in a net amount of 624.2 kW.

Surely can be optimized but i consider quite a fair amount for 1 and half cycle, maybe i can share the save file if someone is interested

 

p.s it took roughly half cycle to cool down below 115 with wheezworts and almost 1 cycle for the last part with AETN

[Gus Smedstad]

90 g/s is almost twice what I calculated. Not great - still on par with just building a steam turbine, which is 800 watts and no upkeep cost if powered directly by magma  - but much better than the math said. I wonder where I made an error, or if there's something I misunderstood.

I suppose it's possible you're looking at initial production, rather than the long term production. Most machines aren't terribly sensitive to that, but you've got one with heating / cooling cycles in one chamber, rather than a continuous process.

[0xFADE]

I'm now remembering my pre-steel boiler from back before steel was a thing.  It worked pretty well with the tank above being actively cooled.  Shouldn't be a problem at all with steel.  Pre-space easy.

Built on top of a metal volcano consuming molten slickster petroleum.

[Zakery]

I have some test setup for this task (now not on PC so only text description)

chambers

1) incoming oil

2) boiler oil to sour (volcano heat)

3) sour precool chamber 1 (steam turbine)

4) sour precool chamber 2

5) sour to NG converter (freezer)

6) NG vaporizer 

tips:

ch1 - connected to ch3 (glass wall with heat echange plates) for heat echange between SG and incoming oil - SG cool to 200C oil heat to 100-130C

ch4 - connected to ch6 (glass wall with heat echange plates) cool SG to somthing about 0C - vaporize NG

ch5 - trivial - for pre space we can use TG with Hydrogen 

main idea - passive heat echange for incoming and outgoing products, so in ch5 we cool SG from 0C, not from 200 and not use additional process to vaporize NG.

No pums used for SG transfer -  so no space material (we not need even steel.....)

I will try to upload pics later

 

[Abt9]

@Zakery

Can I ask a few details?

1. How's the production rate?

2. How much power does the cooling facility require?

3. How do you move gases around without pipes?

[Zakery]

4 hours ago, Abt9 said:

@Zakery

Can I ask a few details?

1. How's the production rate?

2. How much power does the cooling facility require?

3. How do you move gases around without pipes?

1) - i build few different builds, but don*t measure rate, from math looks like for 1kg/c we need about 11 Termo regulators

2) - if my 11 TR - 11*240 + 1 pump for methane - 240 + 2 pump for NG - 240 with AT for TR cooling and some return from ST we have about 4.4kW consuming for fuel to run 11 NG Generators

3) in boil chamber we have wery high pressure, so for pressure of all system we have ch2 > ch3 ...> ch 5 - just need to open door

I will try to upload detail in few days

HEAT.xlsx

[MustardWarrior]

Last time I tested it with the new mk 3 QOL update you only get like ~20% methane from condensing sour gas so that if you convert it from petroleum to natural gas you are going to be destroying polluted water in the process.  In my opinion that change renders the whole thing pointless, I mean I guess I might try to make like a really small one to dispose of some sour gas that got created naturally.  Otherwise you are just destroying oxygen which is the limiting resource.

 

I should mention it used to be like ~60% methane so it was a big nerf.

[Gus Smedstad]

20 minutes ago, MustardWarrior said:

Last time I tested it with the new mk 3 QOL update you only get like ~20% methane from condensing sour gas

It seems more likely that you made an error in your test than that Klei decided to render sour gas converters useless without announcing it, and that no one else noticed it.

[MustardWarrior]

7 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

It seems more likely that you made an error in your test than that Klei decided to render sour gas converters useless without announcing it, and that no one else noticed it.

I just tested it again, I went into debug mode, created a single very cold 10kg square of sour gas in a single square confined area vacuum and when I did this I found it was 2 kg of methane and 8kg of sulfur.   Seems pretty open and shut to me.

[Gus Smedstad]

I just ran a similar test in debug and got 33% sulfur, 66% methane, as expected. The main difference being that instead of spawning the sour gas at a low temperature, I spawned it at room temperature and cooled it with metal tiles supercooled by liquid hydrogen.

As I said, your test was in error, and likely points to a mistake in debug mode. Or possibly something to do with your installation of the game, I guess.

[MustardWarrior]

8 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

I just ran a similar test in debug and got 33% sulfur, 66% methane, as expected. The main difference being that instead of spawning the sour gas at a low temperature, I spawned it at room temperature and cooled it with metal tiles supercooled by liquid hydrogen.

As I said, your test was in error, and likely points to a mistake in debug mode. Or possibly something to do with your installation of the game, I guess.

Alright I was able to replicate your test.  I was wrong, it must be an edge case where buggy behavior happens.  I thought it was possible methane would be destroyed during sublimation but I didn't think sulfur could be created and it repeatedly added up to 10kg it seemed to coincidental.  What can I say, it was a very efficient test that assumed predictable behavior from the game.

[Zakery]

17 minutes ago, MustardWarrior said:

I just tested it again, I went into debug mode, created a single very cold 10kg square of sour gas in a single square confined area vacuum and when I did this I found it was 2 kg of methane and 8kg of sulfur.   Seems pretty open and shut to me.

Looks strange - a will test it on my setup, in my math i use 66% ratio for Sour to Methane conversion, if it changet to 20% system looks unusable without SuperQ

update my math - even with 20% looks positive with TR

HEAT_1.xlsx

[Gus Smedstad]

It's not clear to me why there's a difference, but clearly there is. My thought on reading how you tested it was that in actual play you're never going to start with supercooled sour gas, and everyone who has actually built a sour gas converter has cooled hot gas instead.

Though honestly I don't know how many people have built sour gas converters in survival, rather than just playing around with the concept in sandbox mode. It's a lot of work.

[FiannaTiger]

I would think out of boredom of venting sour gas to space, as I for some reason have tons of sour gas this time around because of some possible issues in my oil biome.  I have filled up 8 containers with it just trying to clean it up, and I still have a pocket of 38kg/tile that I've not let loose..