No space material sour Gass boiler and Lox or LH2 for cooling? Anyone?

[Lilscratchy]

Hey guys. I recently got into a new world, after 150 cycles I've been getting into steel, plastic and turbine cooling easily. However I find the hurdles of power production an especially difficult one to overcome once again in the sense that it's very time consuming and can't be done with a quick build. I have however acces to oil. 

Ive been thinking of just smashing my current and any future need for power production by building a sour Gass boiler without any space age materials. 

Now I know stuff like supercoolant is the go to coolant for this, but considering I have limitless cooling and a heat source in the form of volcanoes and plenty of magma (volcanea) already available, I really want to know the following:

Is liquid oxygen or liquid hydrogen particularly usable as coolant for in a sour Gass boiler? If it has been done, could anyone help me find or send me some examples for them? I'm having a hard time finding anything and I pray that it isn't because it's not possible. 

Thanks in advance! 

[blash365]

Afaik there is no clean and easy build to get natural gas (!) without space material, since it is a very complex process. First you need to heat the oil up to 538°C. That part can be easily done with a volcano. But this produces only _sour gas_.

The sour gas needs to be cooled down to around -50°C afterwards. Again something you might be able to do easily individually, but the hard part is to get the hot sour gas from the heating area to the cooling area without heating it up too high and without impacting the heating process with your cooling.

There are several builds on this forum though. Some use no space material, some use only a bit. First one is my fav.

 

 

 

 

[Lilscratchy]

Hmm I've used the first one, seen the last ones, they all require space materials though so it's not exactly what I'm looking to build at the moment. 

Thanks for the suggestions though, some of these provide useful insight into how to go about the components of a sour gas boiler. 

[SamLogan]

This one don't use space material, no super coolant, no thermium and it's pretty efficient :

 

[Lilscratchy]

Doesn't that work with the 1kg/'s preventing pipe breakage exploit? 

I'd rather not use exploits in my build

[KittenIsAGeek]

13 minutes ago, Lilscratchy said:

Hmm I've used the first one, seen the last ones, they all require space materials though so it's not exactly what I'm looking to build at the moment. 

Here's some things to think about if you're going to build a crude oil boiler without space age materials.

1. You need a heat source.  Its not possible to generate temperatures high enough to boil crude using Dupe-built buildings unless you have space age materials.    A steel aquatuner will break long before petrol starts to boil into sour gas.  Thus whatever method you use, if you don't have space-age materials, you will need a source of intense heat.
2. You will need to use physical mechanics to move stuff around.  The temperatures are too high to use gas pumps.  This generally means that you're going to need a lot of space.
3. You CAN cool the sour gas down to natural gas using a steel aquatuner, but you need to be careful so that you don't accidentally boil your coolant while transferring the heat from the sour gas.  This means you'll want some way to isolate the coolant from the heat if your coolant ever starts to get too warm.

Oh, and it generally helps if you have a counter-current system set up, so that the crude warms up into petrol and nears boiling as the sour gas cools down to manageable temperatures.

[Lilscratchy]

Point 3 is the crux of my 'problem' I'm thinking about using some liquid oxygen or liquid hydrogen for this. I've been drawing up some ideas. 

One consists of a two tile wide channel for the sour Gass about 12 tiles high. The channel's sides will have metal tiles on them. On the outsides of the channel these tiles will be the walls of a tank with liquid oxygen in them, with two loops of liquid hydrogen in radiant pipes spanning a height of 6 tiles circulating through the metal tiles, and back into and around the tank before passing a regular Steam turbine AT setup. 

Oxygen has along with hydrogen the lowest temps they can get to before solidifying, making it easy for me to manipulate and pump them around for cooling of course. However, Lox has a relatively low SPH, and LH2 a relatively low Thermal conductivity. So I'm kind of worried about which one would be best for providing cooling. 

I'm mostly trying to figure out what would provide the best and appropriate cooling without the coolant boiling away. 

 

[SamLogan]

10 minutes ago, Lilscratchy said:

Doesn't that work with the 1kg/'s preventing pipe breakage exploit? 

I'd rather not use exploits in my build

It's not an exploit, Klei confirmed that given the drips in the pipe have not enough mass to break it. So it legit to use that.

[Lilscratchy]

5 minutes ago, SamLogan said:

It's not an exploit, Klei confirmed that given the drips in the pipe have not enough mass to break it. So it legit to use that.

Wait so I spent all my days working around having to use 1kg packets while it's actually confirmed not to be an exploit?

Ah well better late then never, thanks! 

[SamLogan]

22 minutes ago, Lilscratchy said:

Wait so I spent all my days working around having to use 1kg packets while it's actually confirmed not to be an exploit?

Ah well better late then never, thanks! 

Yep, it's not an exploit. It seems logic, if you take a real air conditionner pipe. If there's only few grams of water condensation in it, it will not break, but it you put 10 Kg of water in it, it will break. In ONI, it's same.

[Lilscratchy]

That actually makes sense though. Guess things will be a lot less finicky for me from now on

 

 

 

[Mastermindx]

9 hours ago, Lilscratchy said:

 have limitless cooling and a heat source in the form of volcanoes and plenty of magma

So why not use magma driven steam turbine?

I never quite understood the need for nat gas boiler because...  Well...  I'm not even burning nat gas most of the time.

Anyway... LOX *might* work...  But I wouldn't even try with LH2. Its liquid temp. range is way too narrow. 

[Lilscratchy]

6 hours ago, Mastermindx said:

So why not use magma driven steam turbine?

I never quite understood the need for nat gas boiler because...  Well...  I'm not even burning nat gas most of the time.

Anyway... LOX *might* work...  But I wouldn't even try with LH2. Its liquid temp. range is way too narrow. 

I have attempted those in one playthrough. However I find them too bothersome to work with. Then again I never really looked into any builds that do this, just dropped a tiny amount of magma on metal tiles leading into a steam room every once in a while. And it wasn't that effective. 

Also natural gas has a lot of useful byproducts, the polluted water it gives off, if you take into account the amount of generators you can fuel with one makes it a water positive process I believe, which then also has the potential to sustain more powerproduction

[psusi]

On 2/22/2020 at 11:41 PM, Mastermindx said:

Anyway... LOX *might* work...  But I wouldn't even try with LH2. Its liquid temp. range is way too narrow. 

Yea, no way can you use LH2.  LOX only has a SHC of 1 so you're looking at about 8.57 J / kDTU, compared to just using hydrogen in thermo-regulators for only 7.14 J / kDTU.

[Lilscratchy]

Okay guys. After an ungodly amount of time spent creating for the most part (and managing) LOX I've managed to fit something together that so far creates about a 0.8 kg of natural gas a second. Lox works fine, Its just a matter of using more Lox to be able to offset heat added to the system by sour gas I'd say. If I can work around this and manage a way to crank this number up to a couple kg's/sec at least, I might create a post and put together a guide on how to build it. If it isn't workable in survival I'll leave it as is and continue working on the neglect my colony has suffered by this build

[psusi]

Again, not only is it a lot less hassle, but it is more energy efficient to use thermo-regulators with hydrogen gas instead of LOX in an AT.

 

[Lilscratchy]

I've tried thermo regulators, but even with ceramic gas pipes these things are painstakingly slow to cool the hydrogen down fsr. I've seen designs using thermo regulators. And these tend to be far from compact as wel, at least from what I've seen

However you may be right though, I just think it wouldn't fit my needs at the moment. 

 

[psusi]

Yea, you do need about 4 thermo-regulators to replace one LOX AT.  On the other hand you don't need to go through the pain of liquefying oxygen ( using thermo-regulators anyway ) and keeping it from boiling.

 

[Lilscratchy]

That's the one big plus of thermo regulators in this case, I'm really walking on eggshells. One wrong move and my coolant boils which would delay me so much in terms of having to repair the damage, it's a delicate setup. Once a pipe breaks it doesn't take long for all the liquid oxygen everywhere to vaporize.

I'm fine tuning it now. It can keep up with a constant inflow of 1kg/s of crude oil turned into sour gas. 

Been able to crank the output up to about 1.3 kg/'s of nat gas. And that's just from tweaking some sensors a little bit. Im going to try my hand at relaying some of the LOX piping. 

 

 

[SkunkMaster]

I've build a few sour gas boilers / distillers, but i've honestly never felt the big advantage of them.

 

The chain is longer then using magma and turbines, since you also have to use turbines with sour gas boilers.

Sure it gives water, but that's about it, and other chains also give water.

 

Trees with crabs give water and lime, which arguably is worth more then just water.

 

Maybe it's just about taste, and the tree + crabs chain aint much shorter either. that said, both magma turbines and trees + crabs can easily be done without space materials. But for sour gas a thermium aquatuner is truly worth gold.

Sure you can make sour gas boilers without aquatuners, just using magma instead, but you still have to distill it, which is a bothersome process without super coolant.

[Lilscratchy]

That's the fun in it, I sure could have chucked my world full of turbines running off of magma, but turbines are easy. 

I also wanted to build something big early on so I wouldn't have to worry about power. I just got everything up and running, scrounge up a little plastic through glossy drecko's. I doubt I have the resources at the moment to build me one of those. 

And you're right! It is about taste.

I find arbor trees bothersome for example, for me it's about finding out if a sour gas boiler can be achieved without any use of space materials. Since I've seen a lot of designs claiming no space materials to then be like 'oh lmao I only have one thermium aquatuner or some bs' 

 

[SkunkMaster]

You wanna make a sour gas boiler, without gimmicks or space materials? Tame a volcano, 1 regular volcano should be fine for most of your cooking needs.

 

then just spam 20 thermo regulators inside a room, fill it with some water and put turbines on top. 

 

that will do, and should be doable even early on. granted only if you can get a hold of some steel.

 

using lox or liquid hydrogen is a no go. they both have way to low thermal capacity before they phase shift to be able to condense sour gas in a stable manner. Unless you want it to go super slow ofc. 

 

you wont be able to get around the turbines, and like i've said earlier, making methane without atleast super coolant is super bothersome.. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[speckle21]

Pre-space sour gas boiler is possible... but SO MUCH WORK and hassle that it's honestly easier for me just to go to space and get the basics like super coolant. 

Here is basic cooler system for mine:

 

The sour gas is made from two volcanoes (off screen). The coolant is hydrogen gas and it snakes around behind the reservoirs in gold pipes. It works, but damn is it finicky and space consuming. The steel cost was astronomical. The time it took to make the steel and hunt down all the lime required was so long that i honestly think a space program would have been competitive.

 

By all means build one just for the challenge, but after building a couple of pre-space sour gas boilers, I now almost go 100% petroleum cookers or go to space and make them properly out of space materials. 

 

 

[SkunkMaster]

going through this thread.. everyone basically saying the same thing... xD

 

1. too much work to be actually worth it

2. alternatives which arguably are better and easier to setup

3. once it's build, and runs smooth and well, you'll still not feel it has any value.

 

xD

[Lilscratchy]

Honestly, it has been worth it so far. 

Getting only 1.5 kg/'s out of it is enough to get quite some natural gas generators out of it. For me it will do well as is, chuck em in a steam room and get some more power out of it. 

Sure it's not one of those beastly 10kg per second things but i' m fine with that for now. 

I agree I'd rather wait for space materials to get something big going, but now I won't have to be scurrying about trying to generate more power. 

Are there better ways? Likely, but I didn't create this post because I felt like literally copying everything anybody else has created. Its a little experiment. 

So it is worth it, for me these immense thermo regulator builds are worse, due to their sheer size. And I did not get nothing out of it. 

Anyways, thank you and everyone for their input