The "OSHA's Revenge" - 10kg/s Sour Gas Boiler - Smaller, Deadlier, and with 53.47% more exploits!

[NurdRage]

NOTE: This is the 3rd major iteration that i've edited in, this one includes sulfur recovery and removal.

First: Big and MASSIVE thanks to @nets for finding and fixing an absolutely game breaking glitch that resulted in a gargantuan design flaw in the original version of this machine. Now that it's fixed this is almost bulletproof.

And with that out of the way.

How do we make the dangerously compact “OSHA Hater” sour gas boiler even better? By making it MORE dangerous and compact! I present to you the massively improved and upgraded: “OSHA’s Revenge”

 

 

This is what you get when you no longer have any regards to safety or simplicity. And like the original before it, the design’s two key elements is the elimination of the steam turbine to save space and the use of the bead pump boiler to further compact the unit.

WARNING: This is not a beginner friendly build. You should already be familiar with sour gas boilers before attempting this. EDIT: What i really mean is that you should already have enough experience in the game to go to space and get thermium and supercoolant on your own in survival without sandbox or cheats. Basically you should be familiar with phase changes, temperature limits, heating and cooling etc. If you've already built one sour gas boiler, then you're fully capable of building this one.

Anyway, while I did make every effort for this to be safe, it’s meant more for inspiration. It can be used directly as-is, but feel free to take whatever design elements you like for your own boilers. I've described below the theory and purpose of every system so you can easily determine what parts you can copy, or leave out for your particular colony.

So let’s get to it. 

The new “OSHA’s revenge” uses a liquid transport exploit to produce a highly compact condenser that eliminates the use of liquid pumps for the liquid methane, saving a large amount of space. Natural gas bubble deletion allows for a single tile wide heat exchanger for further compaction. Additionally the secondary aquatuner has been repositioned inside the boiler to increase safety and the waste heat is ejected through the piping of the natural gas output as a coolant. This simple but crucial change GREATLY increases safety and I actually think the “OSHA’s Revenge”, is somewhat viable for survival mode play if you can get the increased 2500kg of thermium needed to build it. And thus why I call it “Revenge” as OSHA’s response to the original “Hater”. 

Other improvements are some additional safety systems like overpressure choke, oil starvation lockout, improved self-start, and thermal safety. Additionally the unit has limited start-stop functionality, but with caveats so not “true” start-stop, but good enough for almost all cases.

Startup is much simpler using a simple block heater rather than a complex start-cart with its own aquatuner and steam turbine. The block heater just injects start-up heat into the system. 

Input oil temperature should be in between 25 Celsius and 100 Celsius. The optimum oil temperature is 90 Celsius which happens to be the output temp of an oil well. The OSHA’s Revenge can still work outside those temperature ranges, but the output rate is diminished as the self-protection systems kick in.

A major caveat is that the two output gas lines that serve as coolant exhaust from the boiler must never be blocked, they must always be allowed to flow. So lead them to continuously operating natural gas generators and/or out to space, or to an infinite storage reservoir. But they must always flow at full 1kg/s, as they are the only way for excess heat to leave the system, otherwise it will melt itself.

Spoiler

 

 

So here are the pictures of the complete system along with overlays and the startup blockheater is also installed so you know how to initially build it. Afterward the block heater is removed.

Spoiler

All metal parts are steel except for the aquatuners which are thermium. There is also a tiny bit of thermium in the three segments of radiant liquid pipe in the condenser. Some of the sensors are copper but that’s only because I got lazy when building them. You can build them out of any material except lead or aluminum. All non-metal parts (like the insulated pipes, tiles, etc) are ceramic.

 

(Special note: The liquid thermo sensor at the bottom is set "above -240c" NOT "above 240c", i know it's hard to see in the picture, but that's a "-240c", if it's 240c it won't work properly)

 

Here’s is a size comparison with the original OSHA Hater.

Spoiler

 

 

The original "OSHA Hater" came in at 13x18 tiles or 234 total. The improved "OSHA's Revenge" comes in at 12x14+6 tiles or 174 tiles total. 25.6% smaller than the original. 

So for a thorough explanation of the systems.

The Bead Pump Boiler

Spoiler

They are common now, but the original OSHA Hater was one of the first designs to use bead-pump boilers. The idea is to generate a liquid bead that falls down into the boiler, and on it’s way down it heat exchanges with every element in the same tile, including the sour gases going up. In doing so this creates an extremely efficient heat exchanger that raises the oil temperature to boil into sour gas, and lowers the sour gas temperate to ~ 200 Celsius which can be processed by much smaller heat exchangers and condensers. This allows for extremely compact single tile wide channel designs.

As much heat exchange mass as possible is needed in each tile between the bead former and aquatuner so the oil and gases properly exchange heat. Steel liquid vents and conveyor bridges are used, as well highly conductive power cable, radiant gas pipes, radiant liquid pipes, and conductive bridges. The more mass the better. Don't neglect this part. That seemingly wasteful bit of unused radiant liquid pipe and unused conveyor line going down the middle of the boiler is critically important to maintain temperatures.

This particular boiler is very compact with only 5 tiles between the bead former and the aquatuner. Normally such boilers don’t retain heat but the extra heat is produced by the second aquatuner. Now because this boiler is so compact, a lot of heat bleeds out the top since there isn’t enough length to keep it down into the boiler. For colder oil input this isn’t a problem, but for hotter oil above 80 degrees, too much heat enters the heat exchanger and overwhelms it. So to cool down the output sour gas, natural gas is pumped downward through the central radiant gas pipe. This reduces the output sour gas temperature. The weird double bridge structure on the gas lines (in the upper half of the design) is to ensure smooth continuous flow of gas both on the input and output when the temperature sensor is triggered. This is so any downstream natural gas generators can have guaranteed continuous flow for power sensitive applications.

If you are less concerned about size and want more stability, you can extend the boiler taller to about 7 tiles. This keeps more of the heat in the boiler and you can eliminate the stack cooler.  But keep the segments of radiant gas pipe for thermal interaction mass.

Spoiler

 

Meanwhile the boiling chambers themselves will naturally drift to hotter and hotter temperatures because of the extremely high efficiency of the bead pump. To keep the boiling chambers cool, a separate coolant loop is implemented that circulates natural gas through the boilers when they get too hot. The loop also retains gas circulation even when not cooling to help maintain equilibrium between the two chambers. This is done with the gas bridge immediately below the lower gas shutoff.

An interesting design feature is that there isn’t enough room inside the chambers themselves for the sensor necessary to measure the upper chamber temperature. So the temperature is sensed in the coolant itself using a gas line temperature sensor. 

Once again there are a series of gas bridges to ensure continuous gap-free flow of gas during operation. (the ones on the lower right of the design)

By the way, the seemingly redundant gas bridge immediately to the left of the lower gas shut off is for startup. It ensures some gas gets injected into the empty loop so the temperature can be sensed, otherwise gas never gets into the loop. So don’t worry if you’re wondering if it’s a mistake, it has a purpose at startup that is redundant during normal operation. 

The upper chamber is open and that’s where the oil boils into sour gas. The lower chamber is sealed with water to create steam at a density of 500kg/tile. You can use higher or lower density, but too little steam and there won’t be enough thermal mass for stable operation. 

The Heat Exchanger 

Spoiler

 

The heat exchanger is a much more efficient single tile wide channels version that allows for extremely compact design. Since it’s only one tile in each channel, each tile of gas HAS to exchange with the bridges and tiles next to it. Thus it can be much more efficient. To aid in the efficiency, conveyor bridges are used to optimize heat transfer since the simulation counts all three segments of the bridge as one, and thus heat is transported instantly across. Other bridges would be helpful, but there was no room.

Spoiler

To save space, joint plates are incorporated directly into the exchanger to transfer power from the hot side to the cold side. Be careful when placing them in your own designs. They are not nearly as thermally conductive as diamond tile so they are best use in non-critical areas like at the end of the exchanger and away from the condenser.

The Condenser

Spoiler

 

The condenser uses the liquid transport exploit where if liquid condenses inside an air mesh tile, it can’t exist there and so the simulation instantly teleports it upward through as many tiles above as it can until it reaches a gap. This is why there is a weird gap near the top of the exchanger. However during normal operation all of the methane will be transported into the second tile at the bottom of the exchanger.

The little notch in the upper right of the condenser allows sulfur to teleport into that block and not accumulate in the condenser itself. Solids teleport into the closest immediate tile, not strictly upward like liquids. This notch is critically important to prevent a game breaking glitch were sulfur builds up in the air mesh tile and blocks further gas flows. Do not ignore the notch. Special thanks to @nets for determining this.

Anyway, i didn't bother to use the sulfur to cool the system since it's too small for sufficient heat exchange and would add unnecessary size. Also, very tiny amounts of sulfur like milligram quantities will occasionally liquefy inside the system and gum it up. So i decided not to use sulfur for cooling. But do not leave the sulfur inside the machine. The tile it lands on averages about 140-150 degrees, but the melting point of sulfur is 115. Eventually it will liquefy inside the machine and disrupt operation. So at least get it outside of the machine. Set the conveyor loader to load sulfur.

The diamond tempshift plate to the right of the notch is to help heat up the solid methane that may end up in the notch. The tempshift plate is not strictly necessary, but helping the solid methane to heat up ensures smoother and more consistent gas flow. Don't put the tempshift place in the notch itself, it will interact with the rest of the condenser and get colder rather than hotter.

Final note is that the condenser uses thermium pipes to exchange heat.

Now I know a lot of you guys don’t like exploits, and that’s fine. Just don’t use this condenser design element in your own sour gas boiler designs. Instead, created a larger chamber underneath with a pump to pump up the liquid methane as it condenses.

Condenser "Free Running" Control Loop

Some sour gas boilers carefully control coolant temperature to maintain optimum efficiency. 

The two aquatuners are barely enough to keep the correct operating temperature which is why I said earlier that the input oil must be below 100 Celsius. If it’s too high, or there is a disruption to the system which causes heat to leak out of the boilers, then the condenser will get overwhelmed and be unable to keep up with the boiler production. Normally this is detected by putting an atmo sensor in the condenser to see if there is too much gas. This can’t be done here since there is no room and because the pressure is usually 50kg/tile just before the condenser, no atmo sensor would work. So the error condition is detected indirectly by measuring the coolant temperature, as it gets overwhelmed the coolant heats up trying to keep up. If the coolant gets too warm, then the sensor is tripped and the oil input is paused to allow time for the condenser to process the gas already inside. Once the pressure is low enough, the coolant will cool down again and the system resumes.

As long as the input oil is below 100 Celsius, the whole system will self-correct to optimum pressure and be able to process 10kg/s of oil without interruptions.

So as you can see, the condenser control is a little different in that the temperature is allowed to "free run" rather than be directly controlled. Instead the rest of the system is slowed down to match the condenser. This allows for a more compact system with less overhead and less parts, but sacrifices a little bit of capacity. If oil is too hot, the system can't keep up. But seeing as how its easy to keep oil below 100 celsius, and by the time you build this boiler you'll already have tamed colony temperature control, i thought the sacrifice was inconsequential for most players. 

Natural Gas Bubble Deletion

Now those of you with sour gas boiler experience are screaming that there is seemingly no protection against natural gas bubbles exiting the condenser on the boiler side  and clogging up the boiler and exchanger. You’re right that would be a problem. But apparently the bead pump actually deletes foreign gases in front of it if there is none of the same gas to push it into. So the system naturally deals with and deletes natural gas bubbles. 

Yes this is 100% an exploit. I did say this design uses MORE exploits than the OSHA hater.

Oil Heater

Spoiler

The optimum oil temperature range is between 80-100 celsius. Above that the system will stutter as the aquatuners can’t keep up and the system pauses to clear out the excess heat. Below that the system will run fine, but some of the natural gas will condense as solid methane rather than liquid. The problem is solid methane takes a very long time to melt, and thus while it's doing so, it's not outputting as gas and gives the apparent observation that the output is dropping. Then when it melts again it boosts the output too high. This results in inconsistent gas flow. A terrible thing if your colony is dependent on continuous power. To combat this, oil that’s too cold is preheated using the outgoing hot natural gas. Oil down to 25 Celsius can be used. Even colder oil can be still be processed but the output on the system will drop off slightly as not even the oil heater can keep up, down to 6.4kg/s of natural gas rather than the full 6.66kg/s.

Without the oil heater the output can drop to 5kg/s if very cold oil is used. So keep the heater if you’re using cold oil.

I recommend bringing the oil into temperature range before use in the OSHA’s Revenge.

The oil heater is part of the "free running" control loop mentioned earlier. Rather than changing the temperature of the coolant to match the input conditions of the oil. The temperature of the oil is changed instead to match the input conditions of the coolant. I decided on this system because it's much more compact, the oil heater is physically just the sensor and the liquid shutoff valve, the "heating element" is the radiant pipe that's tucked away behind the pumps. This is smaller than a dedicated coolant control system, or a liquid tepidizer and associated insulation box for the oil if the heater was separate. 

 

Automation systems design

Spoiler

(Special note: The liquid thermo sensor at the bottom is set "above -240c" NOT "above 240", i know it's hard to see in the picture, but that's a "-240c", if it's 240c it won't work properly)

Oil lockout

In the event oil flow is disrupted, the oil sensor (at the very top of the design) will shutdown the boiler to prevent it from overheating. But be warned, if the oil is stopped for too long, and the system gets too cold, then restarting will be very difficult and you may need to manually go in and restart it yourself. The OSHA’s Revenge is designed for continuous operation with the expectation of a minimum of 3kg/s oil to maintain temperatures and flow.

Over pressure stop-start

Remember that the two output gas lines that connect to the cooling systems MUST ALWAYS BE FLOWING AND UNBLOCKED. But the other ones can safely be blocked or fed into natural gas generators that are turned off. The unused gas build up is detected by the output over-pressure system (the atmo sensor at the very top of the design) and will safely pause the OSHA’s revenge. Once the pressure is relieved the system will resume operation.

As long as the two gas lines mentioned earlier are always flowing and unblocked, then the gas pressure will always decrease quickly enough that the temperature drop in the boiling chambers will be small enough that they can easily recover. Thus, this boiler requires a MINIMUM of 3kg/s of oil to produce the 2kg/s of natural gas to run those lines.

Automation design theory

The automation layout looks weird because it partially uses NOT based logic. A lot of the control signals revolve around a bunch of conditions all working at once. So a bunch of AND gates are normally needed to ensure all of them are TRUE before opening the oil vent. To greatly simplify the wiring and reduce the number of AND gates, the logic is flipped to NOT logic. Instead the theory is “NONE of these alarms can be on, and then the oil vent is opened”. By doing it this way, all the automation lines can be tied directly together. As long as they are all FALSE, the vent will open. And as soon as one of them is TRUE, the vent closes. This saves on a lot of AND gates.

There are still a few gates for those parts that aren’t using NOT logic. But way less than my earlier iterations.

And just so you know, the power meter is a way of connecting the logic from the over pressure and oil sensor to the main oil vent control line. Normally I would use a wire bridge and a NOT gate, but I found that awkward in the small space available. But since the over pressure and oil sensor turn off the power to the aqua tuners, I found detecting the power a more elegant way to get the control signal out and to use NOT logic at the same time.

I know it looks weird, but it was more convoluted before.

(EDIT: If you're coming here from an earlier build, you may be asking "where is the glitch detection system?", thanks to @nets the glitch has been completely solved and the detection system has been removed)

Build up and Startup

Build the system WITHOUT POWER OR OIL. Do not allow any part of it to activate before the rest of it is ready. You don’t want your poor dupes being melted by hot aquatuners. But of critical importance is that super coolant needs to start hot. If it starts cold and starts condensing gases, it will disrupt the startup process. So make sure the supercoolant is hot before you inject it, at least hotter than -100 Celsius, preferably 0 or higher. 

A lesser issue is gas atmosphere. While other sour gas boilers must be evacuated before startup, this one must have some gas in it. It can be any low boiling gas like hydrogen, oxygen, natural gas or sour gas. Don’t use carbon dioxide or steam. 

The reason why some gas must be in the system for startup is to provide a thermal conductivity and a thermal cushion. If you evacuate it then the upper aquatuner will overheat since there is no gas to conduct the heat. And while other boiler designs start with a bit of oil, that can’t be used here since it’s too small, the sudden burst of sour gas at 550 celsius when it boils will rush over and melt the devices in the heat exchanger. So a little bit of gas should be left in during construction, or injected. Keep in mind the gas will get ejected out the output gas lines so you may want gas filters or simply repair the damage to natural gas generators. Alternatively, inject natural gas into the boiler side so it comes out as natural gas. The gas density should be 1kg/tile or higher.

Remember that the lower boiler chamber is sealed with 500kg/tile of steam, you can use water to start. The exact amount isn’t critical, and you can even have gas bubbles in that chamber. But it does need a decent amount of thermal mass for stability.

Spoiler

 

Startup is very simple and just requires the block heater as shown already attached in the diagrams. Ensure the block heater water is up to 85 celsius before starting. Once everything ready (including starting gas in the boiler side), turn on the power to the OSHA’s Revenge and inject hot supercoolant into the coolant loop. Turn on the oil flow as well.

After that the system is entirely self-starting. First it will heat up the boiling chambers. This will take a LONG time since water has such a high heat capacity. In my tests it took about 7 cycles. Once it’s at temperature, it will release the block heater and start dripping in oil to boil. At first it will oscillate a few times as it goes through cycles of over-pressure and self-protection cooling. But eventually it will settle into smooth operation.

I recommend deconstructing the block heater as soon as it releases. If it’s left in then it can accidentally trigger during an overpressure cycle. But it will inject too much heat and the system may sometimes melt. So pay attention, maybe attach a notification bell to the automation line so it tells you when to deconstruct it. 

Spoiler

And this is an operating OSHA's Revenge.

 

Further Thoughts and Future

I'm not sure how to make this even smaller. While i'm sure the heat exchanger can be shortened further, i'm not sure how to go further. A more efficient heat exchanger, perhaps using thermium bridge components, may allow a smaller layout. But at that point i'm not certain where to put the other devices.

Oh well, there isn't any pressing need to for further miniaturization. So far the natural gas generators themselves take up all the space so unless Klei makes super generators that can take in 1kg gas, a bigger sour gas boiler is inconsequential. (Klei: HINT HINT!)

As said before i intend this design more as a reference design to inspire, the larger, but simpler, designs that are much better for survival mode since they are easy to understand, build, and repair. Take whatever elements you like out of this design and incorporate them into your own.

 

Now i know i stole a lot of design elements for this, but i'm too negligent to find the links, so feel free to post the links to those earlier design elements and give those player credit. In particular i don't know where the original design for the liquid transport exploit was used, but it's definitely not me.

 

Forgot to add. Here is the blueprint file if you're using the ONI Blueprints v2 mod

 

osha's revenge v3.blueprint

EDIT: Thanks to @nets fixing a glitch in the original version. I honestly think this version is now competitive for survival mode play. Other players that have built this are reporting it stands up well to a lot of adverse conditions.

I suppose the next big upgrade would be to incorporate true start-stop capability with indefinite wait times between starts. Right now it can be start-stopped as long as the boiling chambers aren't allowed to get too cold between starts. The solution isn't too hard: Leave the block heater in, and incorporate a lot more automation to prevent it activating unnecessarily or adding too much heat. Unfortunately this makes the system bigger which goes against the minimalist philosophy of the design. Oh well. something to think about, maybe steal heat from the oil or something. 

 

[tuxii]

@NurdRage with the deathblow to all the rest of our small 10 kg/s dreams!

I have a design for a 10 kg/s boiler that takes up 312 tiles.  I thought it was a good design!

OSHA's Revenge here uses a mere 170 tiles.  And you could cut 3 corners off to make it 167...

 

[OxCD]

Pumps sucking NG might be the only non-exploit thing into this.

 

That's a truely wonderful job you've done here  both the build and the explanations are impressives.

[mathmanican]

My only concern is "53.47%"  I really wanted to see the math on this fact.  Looks like a fun project. 

[6Havok9]

Very cool build and nicely explained! I really like the glitch sensor.

 

Since you mentioned miniaturization, I tinkered a bit with it. With some aluminum and granite black magic, plus thermium conveyor bridges, I managed to further squeeze the sour gas/natural gas heat exchanger, making everything fit inside a rectangle.

 

 

Due to the shorter heat exchanger, it operates at a lower temperature than your build: the steam box hovers around 550°C, sour gas is created at 544/546° C and enters the exchanger at 130/140° C. It's also much more finicky and took way longer to stabilize. The cooling loops are heavily spaghettified, the same goes for automation. And I had to use rather unorthodox methods to bring the steam chamber to temperature, instead of your nice and easy tepidizer box.

Is it worth the effort? For a two tile pimple? 

Thank you so much for the inspiration, by the way! 

[OxCD]

On 3/3/2022 at 1:24 AM, 6Havok9 said:

Is it worth the effort? For a two tile pimple? 

It's ONI. Overengineering is just a sporting sub-discipline.

And quadrilateral setups are like an outfit for the pole-vault, rather than doing it tools in the open air. It doesn't improve that much performances, but it makes it much more pleasurable for viewers.

[NurdRage]

26 minutes ago, mathmanican said:

My only concern is "53.47%"  I really wanted to see the math on this fact.  Looks like a fun project. 

To know where that number came from, just remember that 64.82% of all statistics are made up on the spot, and the other 45.34% are lies.

25 minutes ago, 6Havok9 said:

Very cool build and nicely explained! I really like the glitch sensor.

 

Since you mentioned miniaturization, I tinkered a bit with it. With some aluminum and granite black magic, plus thermium conveyor bridges, I managed to further squeeze the sour gas/natural gas heat exchanger, making everything fit inside a rectangle.

 

 

Due to the shorter heat exchanger, it operates at a lower temperature than your build: the steam box hovers around 550°C, sour gas is created at 544/546° C and enters the exchanger at 130/140° C. It's also much more finicky and took way longer to stabilize. The cooling loops are heavily spaghettified, the same goes for automation. And I had to use rather unorthodox methods to bring the steam chamber to temperature, instead of your nice and easy tepidizer box.

Is it worth the effort? For a two tile pimple? 

Thank you so much for the inspiration, by the way! 

WOW! That's amazing! awesome that i could inspire you!

I did toy with a "Scrooge McDuck" version that uses the best parts without regard to cost, like thermium bridges and so on. Ultimately i opted for more cost accessibility and more stability. But i'm glad someone has already done the work already

 

[Saturnus]

24 minutes ago, 6Havok9 said:

Is it worth the effort? For a two tile pimple? 

I think you missed the point about only using thermium for the ATs and one other thing of 100kg.

Sure, using 6-10 times as much thermium and aluminium, yeah sure, you can miniaturise a lot of thing.

[6Havok9]

3 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

I think you missed the point about only using thermium for the ATs and one other thing of 100kg.

Sure, using 6-10 times as much thermium and aluminium, yeah sure, you can miniaturise a lot of thing.

In my take I've put 3 aluminum joint plates and 4 aluminum tiles. Plus a granite tile and a granite pipe. I used no diamond. There are 4 thermium conveyor bridges, could try to make it work without them. Sure, it's more than two aquatuners, but very far from "6/10 times as much". But yeah, sure, gotta put that termium on pedestals.

I think I missed your point. And I'm perfectly fine with that.

Peace

[tuxii]

Considering that Spaced Out! has Niobium, Aluminum and Tungsten volcanoes and this is a 10 kg/s boiler... the Scrooge McDuck approach is the right approach, imho.  Even in the base game, very rarely do you only have 1200 kg of Thermium.  In the sake of miniaturization, I still think @6Havok9's design could be shrank further by 4 more tiles, but this would dent the box in 2 places.

If someone wants a more practical and accessible design, might I be able to interest you in a nice jBoiler?

[mathmanican]

On 3/2/2022 at 5:24 PM, 6Havok9 said:

Is it worth the effort? For a two tile pimple? 

 

Always. Though this spot keeps begging to be filled.

[babba]

On 3/4/2022 at 2:28 AM, mathmanican said:

Always. Though this spot keeps begging to be filled.

Its a small corner, the dupe cleaning there would need to have very little hands and a small lung.

[nets]

I made a variant of your build in survival, as i was cramped for space. It uses geothermal heat, only steel and tiny bit of aluminium, and could probably go for a full 10Kg (but not tested and 2 Kg/s is more than enough for my current needs). I noticed the problem you mentioned about the airflow tile suddenly becoming a void, or rather, in my case it didn't (at least not since i applied a small change). I noticed the tile filled up with sulfur, and i just assume if it gets big enough then bad things will happen. But if you incorporate an open tile where indicated, your methane liquid will go up but your sulfur go to that tile.

[NurdRage]

Awesome its working for ya!

Unfortunately i tried that for my own build but it doesn't work. Sulfur doesn't appear. Which is strange since the layout and positions are very similar to yours. 

 

EDIT: IT WORKS! I built a new version form scratch since i suspected the glitch might be inherent in the tile. If you say it's a result from sulfur build up then i suspected there be a "hidden" variable in the tile that's glitching.

If built from scratch anew then it works!

To everyone incorporating the update: Remove that tile specified by @nets and also remove the diamond tempshift plate inside the bottom of the condenser, the one to the immediate left and up one to the removed tile. It's also important to incorporate sulfur removal since sulfur will melt if left there. I've updated the main post with the new info.

Anyway thanks @nets ! i never found the glitch because i kept working on it in my original build. But since there was a hidden variable in that tile that got glitched, i kept getting thrown off. I actually did try leaving that tile open, but it never worked. Now we know why.

You're a genius man!

I'm so happy! the "OSHA's Revenge" is now bulletproof

[Prince Mandor]

Now we have cold sulfur. Is it useful to add sulfur to counterflow?

[JRup]

5 hours ago, Prince Mandor said:

Now we have cold sulfur. Is it useful to add sulfur to counterflow?

The benefit is relatively low. But it's there, nonetheless.

This is mostly my design opinion: If well managed, you can start with part of the sulfur counterflow near the chiller and the rest of it in a separate area to end up with natural gas near 80º C... But it can be done and every bit helps when it comes to these hellish contraptions.

[NurdRage]

6 hours ago, Prince Mandor said:

Now we have cold sulfur. Is it useful to add sulfur to counterflow?

It's a great idea, and i did try it, but the heat exchanger is too small and short for there to be significant heat exchange with the sulfur. the sulfur warmed up by only about 10 degrees, and considering it has a low SHC anyway, that means an even smaller effect on the natural gas.

To get a useful benefit we'd need a much taller heat exchanger. But the OSHA series of sour gas boilers is designed around compactness. Maybe someday i'll start a "Redneck Hater" series that emphasizes hyper efficiency. 

[6Havok9]

7 hours ago, Prince Mandor said:

Now we have cold sulfur. Is it useful to add sulfur to counterflow?

Maybe it's not that useful for increasing efficiency, but for sure it's useful to have the sulfur at the desired temperature.

This one has sulfur reclamation, sulfur stays in in the sour/natgas exchanger area until -135°C, then goes in the natural gas chamber until -30° C.

 

Conveyors. Bad conveyor lines.

Spoiler

 

It just so happens that by making that -30° C sulfur snake behind the two turbines that cool down the two 500+°C natgas lines, it comes out at a most acceptable temperature It also helps keep the turbines cool, since the other coolants are just 95°C crude oil and exhaust water.

Spoiler

 

 

 

[NurdRage]

If the objective is to bring the sulfur up to warmer temperatures rather than increase the efficiency of the system, then loop the conveyor rail into the bottom sour gas boiler chamber, with a bit of tuning the sulfur can be brought up to the 0-100 Celsius range. Just adjust the residence time by shortening or lengthening the rail inside the chamber until you get the temperature you want in the outgoing sulfur.

so much heat is produced down there that the effect on the system is inconsequential. 

[6Havok9]

16 hours ago, NurdRage said:

If the objective is to bring the sulfur up to warmer temperatures rather than increase the efficiency of the system, then loop the conveyor rail into the bottom sour gas boiler chamber, with a bit of tuning the sulfur can be brought up to the 0-100 Celsius range. Just adjust the residence time by shortening or lengthening the rail inside the chamber until you get the temperature you want in the outgoing sulfur.

so much heat is produced down there that the effect on the system is inconsequential. 

Letting the sulfur travel through areas hotter than its melting point is very unsafe. Even if the flow is reliable, save/load is bound to screw things up. If sulfur ends up in the ascending part of the sour gas column it will never be deleted and will clog up the system: gas sulfur is heavier than sour gas.

During normal operation you get a 13200 grams sulfur packet (on average) every 4 seconds, assuming the sweeper and loader are always working. This is quite reliable, it does fluctuate a bit according to pressure inside the system, with the occasional 11 or 15 kg packet.

But there is the start up problem, when the system still has to build up enough pressure and stabilize: this results in stuttering production of less than 3300 g/sec of sulfur, which leads to smaller and very different packets that could melt on the superhot short rail.

Having the rail in the safe zone means that during startup, when the chimney is still too hot, any liquid sulfur is gonna drop down and solidify instantly. I've seen it happen sometimes while tinkering with start/restart procedures, because the top part of the exchanger goes over 120° C.

So imho, routing the sulfur through the boiler chamber works, until it doesn't, and just one mishap is one too much. After testing it for over 500 cycles, I simply accepted the fact that the hotter areas are off limits!

[NurdRage]

That's why i said in the main post i didn't route sulfur through the hot stuff, or heat the sulfur using the system at all. For exactly those reasons. 

Overall i think ejecting the sulfur straight out is just easier.