Petroleum Generator Cooling Setup

[Sigma Cypher]

Francis John has a good video about using a counter-flow heat exchanger to make 10kg/s of petrol with heat from a volcano with no space-age materials.  Use that to fuel 5 petrol generators and you have 10 to 15 kW of power, 3750 g/s of polluted water and 2500 g/s CO2.  But it turned out to be harder than I thought to make a petroleum generator plant that doesn't overheat, manages CO2 etc. He has another video with one solution to the problem but it only uses 2 generators, and involves mixing hydrogen and CO2 in the same room. This design uses the water sieve to destroy the heat of 5 generators, 5 batteries and 9 skimmers, and nets 7 kW (or 12 kW with tune up).  It consumes 10 Kg/s of petrol and 2 kg/s sand.  Note that one cycle of the rock granulator produces 100 kg of sand from 100 kg of sandstone. 

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The polluted water bath stabilizes at 40C, the generators and skimmers at about -15C. 

Thermal

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Note that the polluted water outputs at the temperature of the generators, so the placement of the metal tiles and mesh tiles makes a difference; the polluted water that drips on and puddles around the base of the skimmers and generators provides much of the cooling (and soaks up the heat from the aquatuner) and eventually gets consumed by the sieve.  The design pretty much doesn't work with all mesh tiles.  You might ask, "How can something that is the same temperature as the thing it comes from provide cooling to that thing?"  Good question - I don't know.  It just does.

Plumbing

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Power

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Automation

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Thermosensor at input of aquatuner: above -30C

Batteries above each generator activate at 10, 30, 50, 70, 90 % of max charge.

 

[caffeinated21]

I don’t think it’s smart to run your cooling loop through that reservoir sitting in the hot polluted water; heat will get transferred in there, forcing you to run your thermo-aquatuner more than necessary 

[Sigma Cypher]

Thanks @caffeinated21!  That's a good point.  The plumbing that runs through the hot polluted water is insulated igneous pipe and the least amount running through the hot water the better.  But the aquatuner itself needs to be sitting in the polluted water pool -- that is where it transfers the heat from the petroleum cooling loop, which then eventually gets removed by the sieves.

[WanderingKid]

This is one of the methods I use for dealing with the Petrogens.  I stack them 2 at a time, expand horizontally if necessary.  If you don't mind non symmetrical setups, put another floor to the right to keep the EE from sitting there with the door open.  No, the images aren't from the same playthrough, but I use the setup often enough I took images at different points.