The 3-PONG - compact Plug-&-Play Oil-to-NG Setup => more than 2kg/s NG output

[OxCD]

Hi folks !

 

Here after, I bring to you the Pocket Plug-&-Play Oil-to-Nat Gas setup, aka « 3-PONG » (it's just a name so far, but it's thug to get a name ^^)

 

Before going further, I would thanks a lot @mathmanican for his precious help, which has begun 2 weeks before. He brings me many tweaks ideas and had a big involvement into the «finished» setup I got here. I'm happy our really long talks led him to another oil-to-NG cooker. He already brought it to the community few days before, all the credits at the bottom of the post.

It's a 14x20. I couldn't get it smaller with similar efficiency !

And now, yolo:

It's rather compact, considering that it can supply 24 NG generators (98% uptime) (approx 19 000W h24 7/7),

You don't need that much space material, at least I've tried to use the less possible.

BUT aluminium is used a lot. I haven't tried with gold, but we should expect a much lower output (and only if things do not go wrong before, test needed). So yeah, as it is, I may say aluminium IS needed. If you don't have, I think you can consider Thermium in place. You should get nearly the same result, maybe a bit more output, but yeah it's going to cost much more Thermium.

 

There's few guidelines I've dictated, in order to build this how I want it to be:

• buildable in survival (sandbox & debug not needed). It means it's not complicated to build, no gas pocket to trap, no multi-layer liquid stack, no very hot/cold material to use, etc... Just build it under full vacuum, at default temp, drop liquid off where it needs to (t° doesn't matter, it will change anyway), provide the closed heat transfer loops with materials, close everything, and push "On".

• not using bridge heat transfer mechanism (if you want to, see credits, there's some setups with bigger output)

• less space material as possible

• as much compact as possible, and as little lost space as achievable

• having at least 4 NG pumps running all the time

• the NG comes out at decent temperature. That way, you'll be able to transfer the gas through industrial/activity area without to much worry (it's a middle temp, not too hot, not too cold).

• to be plug-&-play, it means that you just have to turn On the manual switch, and it should run by itself without any futher action. Do not turn it On before the setup is finished ! So be careful, it's built by dups in "On" state.

Be careful also please, the pre-heating process takes a lot of time. So both AT (not a single second resting) and the tepidizer (used half-time) will use a looot of Watts before it can bring you a lot more. Be prepared, to do not run out of power before the pre-heat process end !

And now some overlays to help you to understand and eventually build this into your own game.

Liquid piping
 

Spoiler

 

Circled in red, bridges are just "bridging", I mean jumping over pipe or other bridge. There's no link between those. Circled in blue, inputs are linked, outputs are linked. For the shut-off/valves, the pipe is just going through inputs. For the ATs, those are just bypass, to allow the flow moving if ATs are turned off (mostly before the setup is enabled the first time) (see credits).

Supercoolant is of course used to cool the Sour Gas into methane. Oil is pre-heated twice, firstly under the steam chamber (below the turbine), up to 180°C max using heat from hot Sour gas, then secondly bottom left, using heat excess from ATs' cooking room.

There's a permanent dripping of 2x 30g/s of crude oil into the cooking plate (using valves), and a shut-off to drip 10kg/s. The permanent dripping is for an EZ-Bead Pump (see credits), the 10kg/s is the main oil supplier.

Using bridges, methane is jumping over many "hot" zone. Unfortunately, during the launch (and only during the launch) it could happened that very few methane packets turn gas before reaching the NG storage room (top-left), just because it's exchange some heat with the pipe itself, even if it's ceramic. There's a mini-pump in the vacuum area, just below the turbine, in case it happened, to vacuum again. It's just damaging a little bit pipes (it's not even close to break it). But if, like me, you're completely allergic to damaged pipe, even a tiny damage, then you must use Insulation (space material) for those few segments.

Other pipes are ceramic at least. Incoming oil piping could be Igneous, but I do not recommand. I think supercoolant piping could be also igneous, but I really do not recommand (it could affect setup output).

Radiant pipes are aluminium. If you have some extra thermium to spend, try first the radiant piping for supercoolant in the cooling room.

 

 

Gas piping
 

Spoiler

 

There's a tiny setup in place to drain escaping NG pockets. BUT, it seems that it's never happening here. The cooling is efficient enough and the cooling room tall enough to not allow NG pockets to be generated. So far I've never noticed any NG pocket into, after hundreds of cycles. I had to create some by myself to test the draining system.

 

 

Rail overlay
 

Spoiler

 

A steel loop is used to transfer heat from the cooking tube to the 1st oil preheating, and/or to the turbine. Aluminium could do very well also, maybe not better, but surely not worse. Sulfur extracted from the cooling room is used to cool the turbine. There's a transitory space, into the NG storage room, for sulfur. That way, the sulfur never get stuck into hot area (because it melts above 115°C, which could happened in many places). That way, I'm able to delay the sulfur as much as I want into a loop, to keep the turbine cool.

 

 

Automation overlay
 

Spoiler

 

What I think I need to point out, is the tepidizer. It's used to for setup pre-heating. Since the ATs' cooking room is hot enough, this setup is never used anymore. That way, if you want to get back your materials, then you can deconstruct this part, carefully. But then if you manually stop the setup for whatever reason, you might not be able to start it back without the tepidizer (you SHOULD be able to do so, but some stuff might break, especially into the cooling room, if your pump, sweeper, shut-off & loader are made out of gold/copper/iron. Or even the mini-gas pump might break earlier. If you suspect this could happened, please build those units in thermium, or at least in steel).

The NG comes out between 45°C and 55 °C. You can lower the temp on thermo sensor into the NG storage room. But please be careful, it could affect NG bandwidth output. And here the pumps are made out of copper (or any 75°C overheat material). If you want the NG to go above, change the building material in consequences.

 

 

Building materials
 

Spoiler

 

 

This is how it looks like before the start-up.

Ethanol - over 400kg/tile for the tepidizer to work

AT's water - 1000kg/tile

Turbine's steam chamber - water 500kg/tile

Oil preheating chamber - water 1000kg/tile

Supercoolant pool - 800kg/tile

 

Pink is insulation, beige is ceramic, light/dark grey is mafic/igneous.

If we're 100% sure that insulation is completely 0% heat transfer, then you can find shorter path from the pump to the liquid vent for liquid methane. But I'm keeping this how it is, here, to be clear against those who do not have enough insulation.

Of course not every metal is important here.

Thermium into the cooking room for ATs, metal tiles and the door. Other metal tiles are aluminium. I didn't noticed any need for buildings in the cooling room to be made out of steel (working under 0°C).

The other doors are steel however. Liquid vent are steel (I'm using it as heat transfer booster, so better be in steel I think).

 

Tempshifts
 

Spoiler

 

Yes there's a lot of tempshifts. But the setup is compact, so not much space to speed up heat transfer, not much space to store heat and flatten the processing, so...

On the 1st pic, you see dirt tempshifts. Around the turbine, because those are touching aluminium tiles below the turbine (those responsible to keep the turbine cool enough with sulfur). Since the sulfur has really bad TC, you need to store a lot of "cool" during turbine calm. Dirt is chosen here only for SHC purpose.

Into the NG storage room, there's both diamond and dirt. Since NG has bad TC, those tempshifts help to flatten NG output t°. That way I think you can easily use refined metal for those tempshifts if you ran out of diamond. Dirt TS will take care of the SHC (you don't need that much I think, you may be able to take out the half without too much impact), others TS are responsible of TC, so gold instead of diamond could really be enough I think.

All other TS are diamond. 2 over 5 behind AT's are igneous (for SHC), but since I'm using a full steam chamber here (1000kg/tile of water), those don't matter at all.

Don't forget those behind the liquid vent.

Some drywall into steam chamber, just for SHC, but not needed.

 

Credits, for inspiration

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope it will help some. Please find the save attached to have a deeper look into.

The setup above is the working one i've built in debug as a final test. The one below, is the realistic one (less insulation, less ceramic, less steel) that is more wise to build in survival. I've switched to less efficient insulated material where it's not needed, but also changed the liquid methane pipe to insulation, as explained above in the post.

If some details are missing, just ask, I'll be happy to provide more info.

Have a nice day !

3-PONG demo.sav

[Nedix]

I'm definitely trying this build in survival. Thank you for posting it.

 

PS: and yes, a save file would be great. I'd like to see how to actually build this efficiently in real life scenario

[mathmanican]

53 minutes ago, OxCD said:

I bring to you the Pocket Plug-&-Play Oil-to-Nat Gas setup, aka « 3-PONG »

I love it.  I'll be building a 3-PONG when I've got bored of exploiting flaking.   Your build is a thing of beauty.  

[TripleM999]

Liquid spaghetti is no prob for me, but i like my automation as simple as possible.  Nonetheless a fine build. 

[beowulf2010]

It's beautiful! I will be shamelessly copying this in my current colony just as soon as I get around to getting supercoolant. Thanks! 

[OxCD]

20 hours ago, TripleM999 said:

Liquid spaghetti is no prob for me, but i like my automation as simple as possible.  Nonetheless a fine build. 

Yeaaaah I know it could feels like going a bit too far, maybe it is, but a perfectly balanced setup, relying on that much heat transfer, needs to be much more bigger I think. Here, the balance is more or less "waving", so automation is used to counterbalance, from time to time.

Also, I really love secured setup. I hate so much when things go wrong, even a little bit, into my setup. So yeah, there's some security into ^^

Lastly, there's 2 or 3 sensors just for the launch. You may be able to spot them by yourself easily if you watch it working (or starting). But trust me this setup is really temperamental during the start ^^ I've spent so much time to think about the best way to tame it, without beeing detrimental to the main mechanism... !

And piping/automation spaghetti are also the price to pay for best space/size uses ahah.

 

Anyway thanks a lot everyone for the support ! I should be able to find some time before the end of the week to provide save, and more details that are lacking about building material, or how to set this up.

[OxCD]

Original post updated with save, and more detail about building materials ! Hope it helps