metal refinery Using Metal Refinery coolant as a Steam heat source

[Chthonicone]

My brain has been looking for ways to game the heat system here. I thought, what if there was something that need a lot of heat, and another thing that wants very little heat, and what if I used them together. I came up with this idea:

A Metal Refinery making steel adds 93,566,480 joules of energy to it's coolant. If we use petroleum, we can safely get it over 400C. Then we can pipe that over to a steam tank for a turbine and release the heat passively in a loop till it's less than 250C and return it for coolant use again.

Has anything like this been tried before?

[SpreadsheetGamr]

Yep

[0xFADE]

It isn't much trouble.

I have a tank of petrol that is almost full to average out the temperature with a sensor to turn off the refinery if it gets high enough.

[Chthonicone]

2 minutes ago, 0xFADE said:

It isn't much trouble.

I have a tank of petrol that is almost full to average out the temperature with a sensor to turn off the refinery if it gets high enough.

And here I was boiling lobsters this time.

I'm thinking of trying to do it without the aquatuner though. Do you think it could work fast enough to happen?

[0xFADE]

The aquatuner isn't connected to the petroleum.  It is just cycling polluted water to keep the turbines and the refinery cool.

The sensor is set to 135 for the sake of the aquatuner inside so it doesn't break.  If you cool the turbines some other way you could crank the heat way up.  It is good to design the loop so that the refinery has priority so it will drain first.

[fishoutofwater]

mine use crude oil

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[Steve Raptor]

1 hour ago, Chthonicone said:

And here I was boiling lobsters this time.

I'm thinking of trying to do it without the aquatuner though. Do you think it could work fast enough to happen?

Yup, here is mine: no aqua tuner and no steel needed, I use crude oil for coolant.

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[Dosephshih]

And note that it is power positive when making refined Alum, iron and steel. (I learn these quickly by the ONI wiki)

Then, refinery + turbine become a must have set up in every game.

[Lilalaunekuh]

21 minutes ago, Dosephshih said:

And note that it is power positive when making refined Alum, iron and steel.

I posted the math in an other thread if your in the mood to search, but the quick take away:

 

Even refining gold amalgam can be power positive

=> It all depends on the operating skill.

[It requires specific traits to make gold amalgam refining power positive.]

[suicide commando]

Brothgar already did an extensive video on this. When refining steel and iron, this kind of loop is power positive. He made a spreadsheet on all the various metals and how useful it was to refine them to get power out of it.

Here is my setup inspired by his work.
The aqua tuner is to keep the turbines and the refinery cool, which it can easily do. I haven't measured if the whole setup is power positive or negative, but it works well. The refinery is cooled with petroleum which then exchanges it's heat with the steam for the turbines. there's a safety system in place where the refinery will not get any coolant that is over 250C. Mainly so the steam doesn't destroy the aqua tuner, and to ensure I don't waste too much heat and just slow down a bit when things get hot. I've never actually seen this happen though, the turbines always manage to cool down the petroleum enough.
 

[0xFADE]

5 hours ago, fishoutofwater said:

mine use crude oil

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Nice use of the leaky oil well

[Argelle]

4 hours ago, Steve Raptor said:

Yup, here is mine: no aqua tuner and no steel needed, I use crude oil for coolant.

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Wat? No need to cool down the steam engine (wheezewort exepted)? How do you achieve this kind of magic?

[Chthonicone]

12 minutes ago, Argelle said:

Wat? No need to cool down the steam engine (wheezewort exepted)? How do you achieve this kind of magic?

How they achieved their magic? I do not know, but I do know that if you control how many ports are open for the steam turbine, and base it on how hot the steam is you can limit how hot the turbine gets.

3 ports open if the steam is < 269C

4 ports for steam < 225

5 port for steam < 200

and if the steam goes above 269C cut off the heat source.

This is mostly useful though if you are working with volcanoes or magma.

[Steve Raptor]

20 minutes ago, Argelle said:

Wat? No need to cool down the steam engine (wheezewort exepted)? How do you achieve this kind of magic?

 

In this setup there is enough coolant to fill the refinery and some extra, while the coolant undergoes cooling from the turbine, refinery can't take more orders for a brief moment, this means that the turbine generally works at around half power or less.

In between turbine operation. I found out that both of those worts are enough to keep things stable.

The trade-off is that you can't produce non-stop metal, but I'm fine with that, I only produce what I need for construction (generally only steel and tungsten).

Its also extremely compact this way and very easy to set up.

[Steve Raptor]

A small tip for all of you folks using metal refinery:

Place a dupe sensor + lamp+filter (2 sec) above it, dupes work the refinery 15% faster when the lamp is activated.

Lamp only activates after 2 second delay (due to filter).

[Chthonicone]

3 minutes ago, Steve Raptor said:

A small tip for all of you folks using metal refinery:

Place a dupe sensor + lamp+filter (3 sec) on top of it, dupes work the refinery 15% faster when the lamp is activated.

Lamp only activates after 3 second delay (due to filter).

Or lock in a shine bug...

That's what I tend to do.

[Dosephshih]

5 minutes ago, Steve Raptor said:

A small tip for all of you folks using metal refinery:

Place a dupe sensor + lamp+filter (3 sec) on top of it, dupes work the refinery 15% faster when the lamp is activated.

Lamp only activates after 3 second delay (due to filter).

May i ask why setting the 3 second delay?

Sometimes i put a weight sensor at the tile where the dupe would stand during the refining, i just found this funny to look at stepping a big button.

[Steve Raptor]

2 minutes ago, Dosephshih said:

May i ask why setting the 3 second delay?

Sometimes i put a weight sensor at the tile where the dupe would stand during the refining, i just found this funny to look at stepping a big button.

To prevent the lamp from being activated by passing-by dupes, weight sensor can also work.

[Chthonicone]

1 minute ago, Dosephshih said:

May i ask why setting the 3 second delay?

Sometimes i put a weight sensor at the tile where the dupe would stand during the refining, i just found this funny to look at stepping a big button.

Probably to stop it from turning on just because a dupe ran by.

[0xFADE]

Oh a time filter For lights is a nice idea. I will have to change my layouts a little. 

[CipherLoco]

@0xFADE Thank you for this post, I had no idea you could use other liquids besides water as coolant for the metal refinery   Not to mention the use of the heated coolant to get a little extra power in the process!  Thanks for posting

Do the turbines in the design typically run at 25% efficiency, or could I use even hotter coolant to get better results?