Crude oil to petroleum boiler - Robo-miner Not Included

[lauawill]

Hi all, I've been lurking for a long time on the forums, but here is my first post.

Based on the mechanics covered by @JohnFrancis and @Tonyroid in recent videos and posts, I have created a design for boiling crude oil into petroleum that does not require a robo-miner. Thank you both for your amazing work and educational posts/videos:

 

I've been hesitant to tackle a petroleum boiler due to complications with the robo-miner that I've seen @JohnFrancis experience in his current survival play through, but after thinking about the heat transfer mechanics of debris trapped in doors, I have developed the following design. Please note that there is room for optimizations in this design to make things more compact, especially with the automation wiring, but the overall concept works. I took the screenshots after testing for 76 cycles, but have continued to let this run in my sandbox map for another 25 or so cycles last night. No issues have come up and it works great so far.

Main view:

Here is the overall view of the design. It uses the magma dripper and the counter-flow heat exchange featured in the videos mentioned above. The liquid valve is leftover from testing, but this design handles the full 10Kg/sec.

The key to this design is to allow a small amount of magma through the top door that drops down into the bottom door and solidifies into igneous rock debris. The debris is trapped in the door and conducts heat with the diamond window tiles and heats up the two tile wide steam chamber to the left. The little steam chamber functions as a heat battery that only transfers heat into the crude oil when the thermo sensor inside the crude/petroleum goes below 403 degrees Celsius. When it does, the sensor engages the door laying horizontally and allows the heat to transfer from the steam room into the crude/petroleum.

I keep the steam at 500 degrees Celsius, but there may be a more ideal temp. I am open to ideas/suggestions on how to optimize. Each time the magma is dripped in, it raises the temp by about 12 degrees.

Here is the most important part. The automation is taken from @JohnFrancis's video where he has debris shifting into a steam room and is cycled by some clever automation. I just added the bottom buffer gate to keep the bottom door open for a couple seconds to allow the magma to form debris before it shuts.

Automation settings:

Thermo sensor in crude/petroleum - Below 403 C

Thermo sensor in steam chamber - Below 500 C (maybe a different temp is optimal? It can basically be any temp, it just takes a little time to cycle in enough debris and heat it up)

Top buffer gate - 10 seconds

Filter gate - 0.5 seconds (opens the door connected to the magma and keeps it open for only half a second to restrict the amount of magma so only debris can form, not tiles)

Bottom buffer gate - 3 seconds (opens the bottom door and allows the magma to drip in and gives it a moment to cool into igneous rock debris before it shuts)

The beauty of this automation is that you tell the steam chamber thermo sensor whatever temp you want, and this will continue to cycle and drip in heat until it reaches that temp. Each time it cycles, it adds about 12 degrees to the steam chamber. It heats up to the desired temp pretty quickly and is totally hands off.

 

So what happens to all that trapped debris? For now, it has been quite happy just staying in the door forever and hasn't caused me any issue.

 

I sincerely thank you all for the quality content on the forum. I have learned so much from all of you and it has helped me get through the learning curve cliff of this game. I hope this post helps and I look forward to feedback and optimizations you may have.