Petroleum vs lead as Refinery to oil heat transfer

[Prince Mandor]

Hello!

I make some petroleum by heat of Metal Refinery. Normally I just put some oil in it and smelt until oil became petroleum, after that use this petroleum as coolant and produce more petroleum in mini oil boiler.

But today I look at lead, and see molten lead have high high thermal conductivity.

I cannot play until weekend, and my curiosity killing me.

Can I use molten lead instead of petroleum as coolant in Metal Refinery? As far as I can see, lead have very low heat capacity, so it became very hot after each use of Refinery, but it also have a lot higher conductivity, so it gives away this heat to oil a lot faster.

Is it more efficient media to transfer heat from Refinery to oil, than petroleum? Or extreme temperature create tons of trouble?

[whodunit]

Using petroleum would be much much better. Higher SHC would give you much finer control and I'm not sure you can even use molten lead to refine oil. Refining something like gold with 0.128 SHC of lead would produce temps much higher than 538c so not sure how that would even work. Maybe using steam as a medium? Idk sounds way too complicated for too little throughput of petroleum.

 

Edit: If you want to experiment with this I'd say consider using molter aluminium. Much higher SHC and conductivity.

[Prince Mandor]

40 minutes ago, whodunit said:

Using petroleum would be much much better. Higher SHC would give you much finer control and I'm not sure you can even use molten lead to refine oil. Refining something like gold with 0.128 SHC of lead would produce temps much higher than 538c so not sure how that would even work. Maybe using steam as a medium? Idk sounds way too complicated for too little throughput of petroleum.

 

Edit: If you want to experiment with this I'd say consider using molter aluminium. Much higher SHC and conductivity.

Alluminium melts at 660°C, lot hotter than petroleum boiling temperature. So, it require same fine control

[whodunit]

20 minutes ago, Prince Mandor said:

Alluminium melts at 660°C, lot hotter than petroleum boiling temperature. So, it require same fine control

Aluminium requires much less fine control than molten lead due to the high SHC. Melting point is irrelevant.

[Zarquan]

Using molten metal or magma in metal refineries is a time-honored tradition.  I run mine with magma to help power my petroleum refinery.  Go for it, but be careful not to boil your lead.  That would be bad.

[Coolthulhu]

I tried to use lead for coolant once, but you can't heat even one batch of steel with it, no matter how fine your temperature control is.

Broken pipes everywhere, unless you keep everything in vacuum and mesh tiles, preheat your heat sink above lead melting point, preheat most of your pipes above lead melting point, precisely control coolant temperature to avoid boiling.

It's only worth using lead if you really need to melt aluminum to use aluminum as coolant.

[nakomaru]

I like high SHC coolants for stability and capacity. Radiant pipes take care of conduction for you.

[Craigjw]

I strayed away from using lead in my refinery, as it's solidification temperature is quite close to the vaporization temperature of oil, so should oni decide that your sensors are wrong and set them to values of other sensors that you've just modified somewhere else in the game, you could end up with lots of pipes breaking.

For volcano powered oil converters, I would suggest that lead is the better choice though.