Cooling the refinery

[Yunru]

But building a petrol boiler is a scary thing in its complexity.

[cezarica]

@Lifegrow Thanks for the inspiration. That's a clever thing you did there with the metal tiles in the steam chamber and vacuum in the metal refineries chamber. Kudos!

[Steve8]

21 hours ago, psusi said:

Just letting it go through the steam room one time and back to the refinery isn't going to cool it off enough.

Works fine for me.And I've seen it plenty of times on YouTube like that. Especially with a cooling a loop through the floor that keeps everything nice and cool. Which I need anyways to cool my power plant and other machines.

Letting it rotate would certainly help, but the temperature drop through just one rotation is very noticeable.

[psusi]

6 hours ago, Steve8 said:

Works fine for me.And I've seen it plenty of times on YouTube like that.

Well if you have enough ( > 40 ) radiant pipe segments in the steam room, sure.  If you let it loop, then you only need 10 or so.

6 hours ago, Steve8 said:

Especially with a cooling a loop through the floor that keeps everything nice and cool.

Again, it is the coolant that you need to cool, not the machine itself.

6 hours ago, Steve8 said:

Letting it rotate would certainly help, but the temperature drop through just one rotation is very noticeable.

It's noticeable yes, but it still comes back warmer than it was when it started.  Which means the next time you run the refinery, the output coolant is hotter, so it comes back even hotter and so on...

[GoHereDoThis]

I can't seem to figure out the bypass for the reservoir + refinery although I have one set up for my aquatuners.  Is there a separate trick for this to work?

[Steve8]

20 hours ago, psusi said:

Well if you have enough ( > 40 ) radiant pipe segments in the steam room, sure.  If you let it loop, then you only need 10 or so.

Nope. It also works with shorter pipes and no looping

I don't know what you're doing, but it works just fine without tanks and shorter pipes. At least when using petroleum or naphtha as a coolant. Maybe you get more power out of it otherwise, but just for getting rid of the heat you don't need anything too fancy

[Occam Blazer]

On 7/30/2020 at 6:08 PM, GoHereDoThis said:

that config is only good for when you have late-game coolant liquids, right?

Nah. Crude oil doesn't boil until ~400° C and it has good thermal conductivity so one pass through a steam room in radiant pipes drops it back to a usable temperature. Not sure what you consider late-game, but I think crude is solidly mid-game.

This is pretty much the final form of my refinery setup:

Hot coolant comes out of a refinery into a buffer tank (left one on each refinery level) then goes to the main cooling pipe and into a main hot holding tank while it waits to get into the steam room. It circulates in the steam room until it's below 150° C and gets kicked out to a cool holding tank. Each refinery gets its own cool holding tank with enough crude oil to do 3 refinery operations in case it's a busy day in the machine shop.

The only relevant automation is the four liquid shutoffs controlling flow, but I'll include the overlay anyway even though it's a bit noisy. (One shutoff each to top off the refinery cool holding tanks, one to kick out 150° coolant and one shutoff that ensures the steam room is below 200° before adding more hot coolant.)

No space materials needed. I think the refineries are made of igneous rock. Doesn't matter that much.

[TheMule]

On 10/27/2020 at 2:21 PM, GoHereDoThis said:

Getting back to this now, and my refineries are still overheating.  The liquid coolant is okay now, I figure it's the actual machine itself that's overheating.  I've made it out of obsidian.  Is there a better material?  Ceramic?  But then it'll take forever to cool down?  Or is it necessary to put a layer of liquid + metal floor?

These seem to be a bit of confusion here.

The refinery produces heat in two, separated, ways. Mainly, it heat up the coolant, 400kg of it per job, that is inside the refinery. The amount of heat generated varies from 10.6MDTU to 93.6MDTU, depending on what it's producing. It takes 40s to dump the coolant out, so - roughly - we have an output of 265kDTU/s to 2,340kDTU/s. Usually, you use your best insulated pipes (most likely ceramic) to move the heat and dump it elsewhere.
Second, while operatating the building itself produces 16kDTU/s.

So what's the plan?

1) you make sure that the coolant you load inside the refinery is cold enough not to change state during the process; if it does, the pipe at the output port breaks (the material the pipe is made of doesn't matter at all);  you do that with a thermo sensor and a shutoff. The shutoff is on only if the coolant temperature is low enough. Typical numbers are 65C for p-water, 260C for crude oil, 405C for petroleum, 430C for naphtha. These are easy to remember round values, the actual numbers are a bit higher;
2) you use the best insulated pipes at the output, then you run radiant pipes in a steam room to dump heat in there. Since there's a sensor and a shutoff, you create a loop basicly, the cooland keeps circulating until it's cold enough... notice you need room for 400kg of it, hence a reservoir might be a good idea (but remember that the content exchanges heat with a tile of the floor, so you need to address that); also some players don't bother with the loop assuming that one pass is always enough to cool down the coolant (which might be true for most setups using petroleum). I'm not sure about it. Also, if you're producing steel, be aware that one steam turbine might not be enough to remove all heat;

3) you find a way of cooling the building, to counter those 16kDTU/s produced by the refinery itself. Notice that no material selection changes this fact... using ceramic to build the refinery only delays the problem a bit... High temperatures might make removing the heat more convenient, but you still have to do it somehow.

[GoHereDoThis]

Well, the coolant (crude oil) sitting in my refinery is at 120+C which is fine as far as the coolant is concerned but the refinery is made out of obsidian which I understand gets overheat damage at 90C so the coolant is too hot for the refinery.  If I understand correctly, I can't get the coolant to below 120C since the steam room is at that temperature (or slightly higher).  So in any case, my coolant will be too hot for my refinery and the refinery gets damaged.

[cezarica]

@occamrazor would really appreciate if you could share the power layout as well. Saw some intriguing stuff and wondering about.

[zerat]

The refinery will only overheat if the environment is too hot.

But you can just make some ceramic and bypass this problem if you are still having difficulty 

[Occam Blazer]

1 hour ago, cezarica said:

@occamrazor would really appreciate if you could share the power layout as well. Saw some intriguing stuff and wondering about.

Sure @cezarica. I use battery flippers based on @Gamers Handbook's regular-watt wire system as detailed on his youtube.

[GoHereDoThis]

I just managed to overheat it again making some iron.  The refineries are 90+C, the oxygen around it is mid 70C, the oxygen at the refinery tiles are high 80C, the metal tiles the refineries sit o are 90+C, and I got a hydrogen loop with radiant tiles going through the refinery area that goes in at around 65C and comes out around 89C.  My refineries are now taking damage again.

I can for sure make it out of ceramic but doesn't that just delay the damage process to happen at a later time?

[Occam Blazer]

33 minutes ago, GoHereDoThis said:

I just managed to overheat it again making some iron.

Maybe post a screenshot of what's going on. Click on the building that's overheating.

[cezarica]

9 hours ago, occamrazor said:

Sure @cezarica. I use battery flippers based on @Gamers Handbook's regular-watt wire system as detailed on his youtube.

Hehe, I knew it! Thanks for the screenshot.

[V Ean]

I know i am kinda late to this, but on a past run i coolant for the refinery (H2o)and ran it through two carbon dioxide gysers to cool it.(i was real desprate for steel)This continued to make about 23tons of steel before overheating(there was two carbon dioxide gysers and one steel refinery for one)

[TheMule]

15 hours ago, GoHereDoThis said:

I just managed to overheat it again making some iron.  The refineries are 90+C, the oxygen around it is mid 70C, the oxygen at the refinery tiles are high 80C, the metal tiles the refineries sit o are 90+C, and I got a hydrogen loop with radiant tiles going through the refinery area that goes in at around 65C and comes out around 89C.  My refineries are now taking damage again.

I can for sure make it out of ceramic but doesn't that just delay the damage process to happen at a later time?

I don't seen anything cooling down the turbines. Are they leaking heat to the enviroment?

I don't know what your "hydrogen" loop looks like, but if it involves a thermo regulator, those things are relatively weak, around -33kDTU/s IIRC, barely enough for two refineries. The turbines can easily output 90kDTU/s each that's way more than a TR can handle.

You need an aquatuner, too cool down the turbines and then the refineries. You could place it inside the steam room but it's crowded with pipes already. Build a single turbine+AT setup nearby. Run pwater inside the metal walls, with granite piping (you don't need radiant, the tiles are "radiant" enough).

 

[Urist McPilot]

On 10/28/2020 at 9:02 PM, psusi said:

Again, it is the oil you need to cool, not the refinery.

I disagree, if the refinery is overheating, then it's the refinery that needs cooling. A refinery cannot overheat from the coolant, it does not take any heat from that source. (The coolant obviously also needs cooling or replacing, but not because it overheats the building, but because it evaporates.)

Obsidian is a mediocre choice as building material because it has a low SHC (0.2). A metal refinery is 800kg, produces 16kDTU/s, if made out of obsidian, it will warm up 0.1 C/s and overheats at 75C. If sitting in a CO2 environment which has low thermal conductivity, on top of some low TC tiles, and running a lot, it will overheat in a couple of cycles.

Making it out of ceramic is a better choice, partly from the +200C overheat temp as mentioned before, and partly because of the higher SHC (0.84, which translates to 0.024 C/s warming speed). OTOH ceramic has a lower thermal conductivity, so it's harder to cool it.

Granite is also not a bad choice, high SHC, high TC, +15C overheat temp. Easy to cool even with just a gas environment, but try to avoid keeping it in CO2 because of the low TC.

If you have it surrounded by other heat-generating equipment, especially if there are industrial buildings/generators emitting high temp CO2, you have to build active cooling to control the temperature on the long run. Radiant pipes through liquid on the floor have the best efficiency, but running them through granite tiles also works well - it does not conduct heat as fast, but avoids wet feet, and should be enough unless you have some more aggressive heat source nearby.

 

[ExEvolution]

So big thing to note, which has been mentioned but doesn't seem to have been hammered how important it is.

A standard refinery that isn't made out of ceramic has an overheat temperature of 75C which is not very high. Heat will slowly leak out of your insulated pipes that come from the refinery, so those insulated pipes should be made of at least igneous rock, but preferably ceramic. If you have ceramic, you should also make the refinery out of ceramic because it increases the overheat temperature by 200C basically making heat never be an issue for the building itself.

If the building ever overheats, you should deconstruct it, then rebuild it. New constructions have an upper temperature clamp of 40C, meaning when you build it, it can never start hotter than 40C, if you repair it, it will remain at the existing temperature which usually means it will just overheat again.

Also, you should sweep up any debris near the refinery, debris will radiate any heat to the nearby buildings and can be easy to miss. You can also throw down a tempshift plate made of ice to cool off the building temporarily.

An ideal setup would put the entire ceramic refinery into a steam room where all of the heat from the coolant, and the building itself can be recaptured by a steam turbine. You of course need atmo suits for this, but this is all solidly mid game tech.

[psusi]

3 hours ago, Urist McPilot said:

Obsidian is a mediocre choice as building material because it has a low SHC (0.2). A metal refinery is 800kg, produces 16kDTU/s, if made out of obsidian, it will warm up 0.1 C/s and overheats at 75C. If sitting in a CO2 environment which has low thermal conductivity, on top of some low TC tiles, and running a lot, it will overheat in a couple of cycles.

Wow.... I suppose technically that could happen.  I've just never given the heat of the actual building a second though and it's never been a problem.  I just assumed he saw the heat damage from the output pipe and thought it was the building.

[Urist McPilot]

13 hours ago, psusi said:

I just assumed he saw the heat damage from the output pipe and thought it was the building.

Well the OP always used the term "overheat" and not "heat damage", and 120C oil is also not enough to cause heat damage... But the pipes are important, if they are not the insulated kind, they also can contribute to building overheat.