Never Over Pressurize Bead and Bypass Pumps - Along with a 10kg/s single-tuner Crude to NG boiler (The Spiral Boiler)

[TripleM999]

31 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

I don't think that the OSHA hater takes advantage of this bug.  To take advantage, you have to be pretty precise with how the flaking happens.  I don't think the beads are big enough to cause the bug, as they have to be greater than 5 kg (not equal to, specifically greater than).  Additionally, the mass of the sour gas has to be great enough to cause the bug to happen.  Since the valves are set to 5000 g/s, they shouldn't boil.  Regardless, I should investigate.  It would add to my original bug report.  (Of course, not that there is anything wrong with using a bug that is this hard to avoid.)

Maybe that's one of the reasons, my concept boiler was unstable at higher flow rates. Sometimes the boiling to petroleum happened already at the top of the boiling shaft.

36 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

You are probably right. They just use the greater SHC in SG and then deposit and store the extra energy in buildings.

Does this not mean, that the boiling process of crude oil to sour gas should be net power positive? So one indeed just has to reach a certain temperature for the boiling to happen, and then has to provide cooling, so that the boiler does not overheat in the long run?

[mathmanican]

On 6/2/2020 at 11:35 PM, Zarquan said:

I don't think that the OSHA hater takes advantage of this bug.

With diamond windows lining the side of your heating chute, here's the numbers for flaking petro.

Once you reach 58C temperature delta, or less, flaking can occur on every window tile, every other tick, provided the correct conditions happen. I'm pretty sure flaking is happening periodically, in addition to an SHC buildup, as you have lots of gas to push away, so nothing would prevent flaking from happening. In particular, the EZ-bead pump encourages liquids to bunch (till the beads properly form). Note that flaking would have to happen twice, for each bead falling.

You get a free 58C increase for petro (a slighty smaller one for crude), amplified by the higher SHC, which helps keep the tiles at high temp ready for more flaking, along with extra heat being propelled ever upwards.  @TripleM999, My guess is that your boiler started getting spotty at 70kg/s, because there were not enough opportunities to flake everything as it went down the chute. Make the chute taller, and you would get more flaking, and more capacity to boil.

With steel tiles lining the sides, it is a bit worse, but similar (lower SHC is worse).  If you swap the diamond tiles to glass (SHC goes up to 0.84), then a 95C temperature delta enables flaking.  Aluminum would win for conductivity tiles, but unfortunately would also melt in this build. Insulation tiles (not insulated insulation), despite having high conductivity, would require a huge (like 600C) temperature delta before they started netting you energy. 

This so far was a though experiment, so let's do some tests.  Here I painted 3 beads of petro at 20kg, ready to fall, as well as what it looks like a few ticks later. 

Spoiler

Some of the petro reaches the bottom (once it gets too close to the vaporization point from conduction). Some flashes to gas from flaking, even with a bead formation there. Sometimes the liquid bead has part turn to dripping (which only happened on the top bead, so if you had a steady continuous flow of beads, there would be no top). 

Conclusion: Use glass, not diamond, window tiles in your OSHA hater designs (to enable the best flaking possible). If any beads do form that are larger than 5kg (or dropped in 5kg chunks from an EZ bead), you might be benefiting from flaking. 

Here's some other fun pictures. 

Spoiler

Flaking is not an "adjacent tile" issue.  When things flake, they shoot out far (if possible). Crazy stuff is happening. 

Edit: OSHA hater builds probably do not use the flaking mechanic.  See @TripleM999's post on a 240kg/s boiler.