Tower of Methane Mk4 - 20 kg/s Self Resetting/Starting Sour Gas Boiler with Liquid Methane output

[Hjoyn]

This is my personal sour gas boiler design, built for late game, high throughput, self reset and regulation, and liquid methane output. It takes in 20 kg/s of 95°c crude oil and produces liquid methane in two built in infinite pressure storages at  at -174°c. Once at equilibrium, it draws approximately 4.5 kw of power. It was built to be able to process a large amount of crude oil and output liquid methane for easy transport. The secondary objective was to make it more reliable and automated, as sour gas boilers in general tend to require careful priming, and previous versions could become too hot and overpressure or too cold and freeze. Overall, it's generally a bit overbuilt, but I wanted it to be extremely reliable, which I believe it is, having run it stably for over 200 cycles now. 

The upwards flow of sour gas ensures that any lose natural gas will eventually find it's way back to the final cooling chamber, and stepped cooling ensures the sour gas will only ever condense at the top, where it's supposed to. The center features a fully automated vacuum insulated gate, that can be triggered along with closing the liquid vents should either the cooling section get too hot or the heating section get too cold, thermally isolating the two sections and shutting off the oil until both sections reach operating temperatures again. The heating area also features liquid tepidizers in water thermal batteries that will automatically turn on if the heating section becomes too cold or does not have any sour gas to pull heat from yet, injecting heat using power from the grid. This allows the system to recover from getting too cold or to automatically heat up from empty without manual intervention. 

Ceramic was used for most insulators, which is recommended as the build operates at temperatures from -190°c to 550°c. Copper was used for most conductors, although aluminium, gold, or thermium can be used instead. Steel was used as a general purpose material where no specific material properties were needed, and can be substituted by most other metals except lead, which could melt in the heating section. The exception being the aquatuners, which need to be steel in the cooling section and thermium in the heating section. The steam turbine and transformer chambers are filled with hydrogen, as a thermal interface for cooling. The liquid tepidizer chambers are filled with 1000 kg of water per tile, and the heating section is filled with 50 kg of super coolant per tile, although the system can likely run with less. All coolant loops use super coolant. The conveyor system is to remove sulfur. 

Now, the images. The resolution is somewhat low, as I had to zoom out quite a bit and only have a 1080p monitor. A blueprint file is included if you have the blueprints mod. 

tower of methane mk4.blueprint

[nikk]

On 4/26/2021 at 4:37 AM, Hjoyn said:

built in infinite pressure storages

I would like to see another variant without exploit.

[Hjoyn]

On 5/8/2021 at 1:40 AM, nikk said:

I would like to see another variant without exploit.

Then use a reservoir?

[GreezyHammer]

Good work, that's what I'm talking about!

Built this little pre-space sour gas boiler way back before I knew what I was doing:

 

[Hjoyn]

On 5/15/2021 at 3:56 PM, GreezyHammer said:

Good work, that's what I'm talking about!

Built this little pre-space sour gas boiler way back before I knew what I was doing:

 

I just watched that video earlier today, what timing! I personally consider pre-space sour gas boilers not worth the effort, as you get much less net power generation at a time when you are unlikely to need such amounts of power in addition to what you already have.

[gabberworld]

On 5/16/2021 at 1:56 AM, GreezyHammer said:

Good work, that's what I'm talking about!

Built this little pre-space sour gas boiler way back before I knew what I was doing:

 

[GreezyHammer]

Good to see there is an arrangement that doesn't need a liquid lock  Thank you!