Is it posible to use crude oil to cool down metal Refinery?

[Mutineer]

When making steel using water as coolant, water temperature rise by about 50C.

According to data, the thermal capacity of oil is about 3 times lower. That mean Oil temperature should increase by 150C.

So, If I use 100C OIl at the start it should become 250C Oil, still lover then about 350 Oil Boiling point.

Now, just before I try that in the real game, I want to make sure I am correct. Did anyone use Oil to cool down metal refinery?
 

[Yoma_Nosme]

Yes. I used an auto shut off valve with sensor to filter out too hot oil. As a safety measure so pipes don't break.

If oil gets to hot divert it to a steam turbine then same auto valve sensor trick till it's cool enough to do another loop...

Petrol is superior imho.

But either way. It works

 

[SamuraiJones]

Oil is my preferred coolant for the refinery. I'll typically draw it up from a big pool in the oil biome in a pipe, so it comes in around 90C. Then I'll dump the hot coolant back in the oil pool, far away from the pump. It'll start heating the pool from that side, but there's alot of thermal capacity, and frame rate drop has usually killed the colony before the heat becomes an issue.

 

Although, this latest game i've hooked my coolant up to a steam turbine cooling, and I don't think I'll ever do it any other way again. Less plumbing, no waste heat, and extra power. Plus it's nice having a heat dump in the middle of the base, cuz you've always got plenty of waste heat there.

Also, you can do it without automation -- I've got a liquid storage and some bridges, and while i suppose it's possible that the system could overheat, reailstically i've never had a problem -- I keep infinite orders for smelting steel and tungsten, and most of the time the turbine isn't even spinning.

(I've got a aquatuner to cool the turbine, but it never runs. A few wheezeworts and you can probably ignore that. You'll notice my oil "water-lock" has frozen and my wheezeworts are hibernating cuz they're too cold)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1842925781

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1842925666

[Gus Smedstad]

Short answer: yes, you can do that.

Long answer: you still have to deal with the hot oil. Crude oil was a good coolant prior to the release update, because the oil refinery had a fixed temperature output. You could feed in 380 C oil and get 75 C petroleum out. This is no longer true, it will come out as 380 C petroleum now.

There's still some heat reduction from doing this, since you get 5 kg of petroleum from the refinery for 10 kg of oil, so you're destroying a substantial amount of heat along with the 5 kg of destroyed oil.

You'll have to store the hot oil, or refine it and burn it in a petroleum generator. Storing it in liquid reservoirs is fairly safe as long as you put insulated tiles under it.

You can also cool it hot oil in a steam turbine's steam chamber, and re-use it.

Petroleum's more flexible due to the higher temperature cap.

Refining iron adds 53 million DTU to the coolant, and steel adds 93 million. For 400kg of coolant, that's 78 C and 137 C respectively. Oil from the oil biome is 75 - 100 C, and you can safely run it through the refinery twice for steel (max ~374 C after two operations).

11 minutes ago, SamuraiJones said:

Oil is my preferred coolant for the refinery. I'll typically draw it up from a big pool in the oil biome in a pipe, so it comes in around 90C. Then I'll dump the hot coolant back in the oil pool, far away from the pump.

It never crossed my mind to do this. It gives me some ideas. Mainly, doing this with water instead of oil.

The long term solution is to run coolant through a steam turbine. As you said, you get power back, and the steam turbine's a renewable heat sink. However, there's a period during the early game where you want refined metal, but don't have plastic for steam turbines.

Once you've breached the oil biome, plastic is not far behind, even if you don't have a glossy drecko ranch. If you're using oil as a coolant, you might as well store the hot oil until you can refine it, rather than going through the trouble of dumping it back in the oil biome.

Long before you get to the oil biome, you're going to uncover ice biome (at least on some maps, I only really know the "terra" asteroids as yet). They're a huge source of water, but not terribly usable since you have to melt it one way or another. Next time I'm doing this I may just dump hot water from the refinery into them. This both cools the hot water and gives you a new source of freshly melted water. Plus you don't lose 50% of the water mass to mining.

[Lafara]

Does it only me whom use Metal Refinery as polluted water purifier with hot dirt as an extra.

[Gus Smedstad]

10 minutes ago, Lafara said:

Does it only me whom use Metal Refinery as polluted water purifier with hot dirt as an extra.

That's... not a terrible idea. You still have to get the output water above boiling, though. What are using to heat it?

[FenrirZeroZero]

28 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

That's... not a terrible idea. You still have to get the output water above boiling, though. What are using to heat it?

Simple don't use the water direct. Use Petroleum/Oil/Super Coolant and pipe it through your poluted water tank

[Lafara]

first pool : i use its metal refinery output coolant (polluted water) to heat up polluted water pool to 80 C. by order lots of copper/gold/iron refining task. then order some steel refining to offshoot 138 C polluted water into steam + dirt right at output coolant orifice.

2nd pool and goes on : I redirect atmosphere temperature around metal refinery (90-105 C) back to polluted water pool via tempshift plate and insulated tile. if it not enough I just order more copper/gold/iron refining task.

 

this idea is LESS efficient , require both atmo suit duplicant to work on metal refinery and keep repairing 1 broken insulated pipe.

BUT , it guarantee germ free hot water , both food-poisoning and slimelung polluted water straight from algae distiller.

safe for Electolyzer at the very least.

[Gus Smedstad]

1 minute ago, Lafara said:

 by order lots of copper/gold/iron refining task. then order some steel refining to offshoot 138 C polluted water into steam + dirt right at output coolant orifice.

The water's going to phase change in the very first pipe segment. I always thought that destroyed the fluid. Since you've done this and I gather it has worked, I gather the hot steam gets dumped into the environment.

I also thought that >120 C polluted water might phase transition inside the refinery. I guess it doesn't? I've never tried it.

You're not getting any meaningful benefit from the heat emitted by the metal refinery and those tempshift plates. The refinery gains 640k DTU during the course of a 40 second run, in addition to dumping 10 million - 93 million DTU into the coolant. It dumps 400kg of water at the end. 640k DTU / 4.17 DTU/g/c / 400kg = 0.38 C. That's a meaningless increase in temperature added to the steam emitted. The only reason it's working is that you're constantly exceeding the boiling point directly from the refining process.

Regardless, the environment suits and insulated work area are required, since you're getting a constant dump of >120 C steam into the room, and you can't control where it goes.

The long-term problem seems to be that the room's eventually going to exceed 95 C constantly, and the steam's not going to condense into water without some form of external cooling. Pumping the hot water out only delays that.

58 minutes ago, FenrirZeroZero said:

Simple don't use the water direct. Use Petroleum/Oil/Super Coolant and pipe it through your poluted water tank

That, I wouldn't do. If I've got oil for coolant, cooling it with a steam turbine seems like a much, much better idea. The polluted water -> steam -> water cycle has a lot of drawbacks, and only really makes sense if you don't have steam turbines yet.

Among other things, you have to cool the steam from 125 C to 95 C, or down to ~40 C if you're using it for bathrooms, or ~25 C if you're using it for crops. That requires significant energy, much more than it would cost to run it through a water sieve. Whereas a steam turbine cooling system gives you power for every DTU in the coolant.

You do get sterilization as a beneficial side effect, but by the time you've got oil, a chlorine sterilization room is a zero-energy alternative.

[Lafara]

true. in its long run ambient temperature inside that room goes to 90+ and freshly release steam at 120 C hardly cool itself inside that room.

 

but, by that time. I gather enough steel to meteor proof asteroid surface. and I revert polluted water purifying to Water sieve once again.

feeding massive regolith instead of sand.

[ruhrohraggy]

Can use the heat from refining, using crude as coolant, to tame cool steam geysers. Since the temperature of the cool steam is ~20-30c too cold for steam gens, can use that process to add the extra bit of heat so the steam gens can do their thing. I'm good with 90C water for feeding electrolyzers with instead of 110C steam...

Good way to delete some heat and recover the water without having to externally cool the geyser.

'Tis fun.

[Mutineer]

Thanks for replies.

I was asking because I play on Oasis and have nowhere to dump heat.

I used a little water I have at 30C to produce some steel, but not enough to create a single steam turbine room.

I simply want to use again a little oil I have as a coolant to heat up this water to 95C, this makes enough steel to start deleting heat.

BTW I am sure I explored half of the map and I did not find a single water geyser.

[Nebbie]

I use oil in the metal refinery for transferring heat to steam for a turbine* to turn the heat into power. It's power-positive for everything but gold, copper, and tungsten; and you'll never really hit making petroleum on accident with a little temperature sensor for what to feed back in.
If I'm not planning on recycling the heat into power, I just use some polluted water pumped out of a pool and dripped back in. A relatively small pool can take a lot of heat, because water's SHC is pretty high. Of course, then I'm going from like, 200W net gain, to 1400W net loss, so it's more of a "I'm lazy and all my batteries are always full" sort of setup than anything ideal.

 

*A TURBINE BEFORE STEEL, EXOSUITS, AND PETROLEUM? If you aren't ranching [glossy] dreckos, I'm pretty sure you're playing the game wrong at this point. As for refined metals, lead is abundant in oil biomes, which is where you find oil anyways. You will not cook your dupes just from the carbon dioxide being 80 C (it actually says "comfort zone" in the thermal tolerance overlay), as it has terrible thermal conductivity; it is the oil they must not touch because it will roast them like crazy. If you can't mop it up, put ladders above it so you can get the pump in. Once you have the turbine and metal refinery all set up, steel is just a bit of tedious waiting. Of course, the turbine needs some kind cooling unless you seal it in a hotbox and have its output cool it, but you'll have the steel for an aquatuner pretty fast to cool your entire base like crazy if you so desire (seriously, right now I'm struggling with a complicated setup involving using steam turbine output water for electrolysis and my Arboria base is at risk of becoming too cold).

[Mutineer]

I have plastic, more than enough. I have refined metals, glossy do trick. The only thing I do not have is a heat dump to make an initial bunch of steal.

By my calculation, Using addition 75C water I have +50C water I have heated to 95C I will able to produce probably double steel I need. When I come from work I will do that.

[Gus Smedstad]

2 hours ago, Nebbie said:

If you aren't ranching [glossy] dreckos, I'm pretty sure you're playing the game wrong at this point. 

Can't agree with that. I've come around to the point where I feel that glossy dreckos aren't really worth the effort. I now tend to view them as a way to get plastic if you're new and don't know about going straight for oil, or if your map doesn't have oil at all for some reason.

Plastic production from glossy dreckos is pretty low, and it requires both Dupe effort and dirt for mealwood. I admit I may be a bit overly cautious about dirt, ever after having run out of the stuff the first time I played, but I just don't like allocating dirt for plastic before I have transitioned to mushrooms, and no longer need dirt for food.

Unless you luck out and capture some existing glossy dreckos, it's going to take time to breed some. I can almost guarantee that  you can reach the oil biome long, long before that happens.

Plastic from petroleum and the polymer press is almost hands-off. The only Dupe effort required is to refine the oil. Assuming you're using the oil refinery and not a mechanical oil boiler, which seems like a safe assumption for the early game, given that a good oil boiler's a bit of a mega project, and tricky to pull off before you have space materials.

Wooly dreckos, on the other hand, are worthwhile. Feed 'em with balm lillies and they have no resource cost. The still do require substantial Dupe effort, but when the alternative is 320 kg of polluted water per fiber, they're still pretty attractive.

[WanderingKid]

I have found that Glossy are mostly useful if you're trying for super sustainable. It's more effective to strap some mealwood to some dreckos and get some glossy going (particularly in forest starts) than it is to get half a petrogen system going for just the plastic... since you can't actually build a petrogen.

[Nebbie]

1 hour ago, Gus Smedstad said:

...

I admit I may be a bit overly cautious about dirt, ever after having run out of the stuff the first time I played, but I just don't like allocating dirt for plastic before I have transitioned to mushrooms, and no longer need dirt for food.

...

Arbor trees and pips will easily make dirt absolutely worthless; they are a game-changer. Of course, you need printing pod gifts to get the first pip and acorn on Terra, but from there you can easily make things go crazy if you manage the pip planting right. Ethanol distillers are crazy too, as each of them can supply 3 compost piles with a bit extra. On a forest start, we're talking dirt being the resource you will have the most of available, eclipsing your starting biome's rock type (igneous, for forest).

[Gus Smedstad]

I think I need to spend some time with an Arboria start to get the hang of how trees and pips change things. I've got both Pips and an acorn from the printer in my present Terra colony, but I really have no idea what to do with them.

[ruhrohraggy]

6 hours ago, Nebbie said:

 If you aren't ranching [glossy] dreckos, I'm pretty sure you're playing the game wrong at this point.

Pretty sure one can play the game however they want. As long as you're having fun then it doesn't really matter eh?

Pains me to see this type of statement, really...

I've done play-through's without dreckos at all...was definitely not the "wrong way to play the game".

[Gus Smedstad]

The only kind of ranching that seems essential is some sort of lime ranching. Either Pacus or Pokeshells, or both. While fossils are a great one-time source of lime, renewable lime's pretty important in the long run.

I'm less sure about hatch ranching. You do need coal for steel, but if you transition away from coal for power early,  there's so much coal on the map that renewable coal isn't vital.

Now that Smooth Hatches only give 75% refined metal - I'm pretty sure they used to be 100% - I don't bother trying to evolve and ranch those.

[Man in the Mist]

Nah, they've always been 75%.  Their main draw is that they don't generate a ton of heat like refineries do. 
Coal is still useful if you're going to make a lot of steel or ceramic, and both are very useful.

Speaking of ranching, another critter I recommend trying to ranch is dense pufts.  Turn all that excess oxygen into oxylite then store it anywhere you want to have breathable air.  Best part is the oxylite won't offgas if the local pressure is high enough.

[Nebbie]

1 hour ago, Gus Smedstad said:

The only kind of ranching that seems essential is some sort of lime ranching. Either Pacus or Pokeshells, or both. While fossils are a great one-time source of lime, renewable lime's pretty important in the long run.

I'm less sure about hatch ranching. You do need coal for steel, but if you transition away from coal for power early,  there's so much coal on the map that renewable coal isn't vital.

Now that Smooth Hatches only give 75% refined metal - I'm pretty sure they used to be 100% - I don't bother trying to evolve and ranch those.

Always been 75%. 100% would at least put them in as an option where you decide you don't want to generate power off making your iron (using exactly what this thread is about) and instead want to waste a whole bunch of time on two breeding steps so that you can save a bit of dupe labor later on if you create a ton of glum ranches.
Sage hatches are the best hatch variant if you can afford the dirt (again, arbor trees), because they eat the same 140kg a cycle, and poop the full mass in coal, double the output of stone hatches.

Dreckos are necessary for renewable phosphorite, although the map is absolutely crammed with the stuff.

[Promethien]

Arbor tree farming is easy. They need a tile of space around them to grow their limbs. Pips eat from the tree directly like Dreckos. 3 wild trees feed a full 8 pop Pip ranch. As for all the little details of getting pips to do wild plants for you: 

 

 

If you look at it big picture making Ethanol gets you some net power (before doing a tune up on the generator), loads of dirt and water. At the cost of some dupe labor and eventually some cooling. If you ride it further you can give up some of the power and water to grow quality 5 food with beans (uses ethanol directly, easier than wheat too). Also the dirt translates into a strong source of coal through Sage Hatches. You can downplay coal all you like but you use it early game for the same reason everybody else does. Its minimal dupe labor and almost no byproduct with extremely cheap set up. That doesn't change just because you have advanced further. 

[Xuhybrid]

I prefer Petroleum as it has a highest temperature range before state change.

[badgamer123]

On 8/23/2019 at 9:29 PM, Lafara said:

first pool : i use its metal refinery output coolant (polluted water) to heat up polluted water pool to 80 C. by order lots of copper/gold/iron refining task. then order some steel refining to offshoot 138 C polluted water into steam + dirt right at output coolant orifice.

2nd pool and goes on : I redirect atmosphere temperature around metal refinery (90-105 C) back to polluted water pool via tempshift plate and insulated tile. if it not enough I just order more copper/gold/iron refining task.

 

this idea is LESS efficient , require both atmo suit duplicant to work on metal refinery and keep repairing 1 broken insulated pipe.

BUT , it guarantee germ free hot water , both food-poisoning and slimelung polluted water straight from algae distiller.

safe for Electolyzer at the very least.

actually there was a more cheap way to do this(i only do it in water)
find a room sealed with only atom suit entry....just pipe in any water in metal refinery....and let it break with a steam turbine on top...reuse the water and let it break again...it could store something like 2000kg water inside,and start to leak or deconstruct it...i just did that in my super sustain run since i cannot find enough power to cool them,i just let the refinery break.