How to make sure the water in oil wells doesn't boil when disabled?

[ZombieDupe]

Been trying to find an answer for this, but can't find one. The natural gas always ends up being 230C or so inside the well and unless you disable the well right as it has been completely depressurized, the 9kg of water inside the well, after being disabled if you don't want more oil, will eventually start heating up by exchanging temperature with the natural gas inside the well as well, unlike the refinery coolant, which stays at temperature even with huge temperature differential somehow.

[JRup]

The solution will depend on your build in no short terms. Many will flood the reservoir and be done with it; all the heat will be absorbed by the oil.

I did a fancy room to improve decor as much as possible and include automation to control the oil well (that's what the liquid reservoir is for in the screenshot). The natural gas here is pumped only when it surpasses 20kg per tile.

 

Spoiler

That's just my take on the oil well. There are other happy campers that will take things to other extremes and will actually decide to heat things up on purpose for other nefarious goals.

[ChrisPBacon000]

I go super simple and have a liquid shutoff located outside the oil biome. I either use a manual switch or a liquid sensor, and then when the oil puddle is too shallow the liquid shutoff opens and water flows to the well. 

Once the shutoff closes a bit of extra water is in the pipes that heads off to the reservoir and a small amount of extra oil is produced. Insulated pipes and short residence time ensures the water never gets too hot. 

[Gurgel]

I add external cooling to keep the well at 75C and put granite tempshift plates all behind it for the gas-emptying. That is massive overkill though. 

[ZombieDupe]

I don't think I have made my issue clear. When the oil well has no more water coming in, there are 9kg of water that stay in there. That 9kg of water is going to be heated up by the natural gas in the reservoir but not used up by it because it will only work so long as it has 10kg. The moment you stop supplying water, the moment the well ends up with 9kg backlog permanently in there. The only way to stop that water from exchanging temperature with the natural gas then is to make sure it's turned off just as there's little to no natural gas in the well or to continuously supply it water indefinitely, as it consumes the water it heats up. But doing this can be near impossible and much more of a bother, so I was wondering if there were ways to avoid making a complex automation setup like... what, with duplicant motion sensor so as to reset water flow when a duplicant enters or something? That may not even work or is likely to fail anyway and it's really concerning for that reason.

I am not entirely sure if the crude oil exchanges temperature with the oil well contents, but what I do know is that the natural gas and the water left inside the well itself do, and if those things are the only ones that exchange temperature with one another, then that creates a problem that cannot be solved, unless maybe I pump in extremely cold water so that hopefully it never reaches boiling point, even if the natural gas ends up at 230C by the time the well turns off and is ready to exchange temperature with the water.

Just did some calculations and, assuming the oil well can hold 2 tons of natural gas before it is ready for backpressure release 

~2,211,000 kDtus (rounded up heat capacity) in 2 tons of natural gas at 230C (502.5K)
~11,90.25 kDtus (rounded down heat capacity) in 9kg of water at 50C (322.5K)

I am not sure how to calculate at what temperature the 9kg of water and 2t of natural gas will heat exchange until they reach equilibrium temperature but based on the number differentials, even though water has a lot more heat capacity, because of the huge mass differential, 50C water is going to boil for sure if left unattended or the well doesn't restart. I'm pretty sure even 0C water isn't going to cut it either.

The well takes 1kg but won't start until it has 10kg inside it if I remember correctly, so seems as though there is no way to stop the system completely because of that 9kg backlog that is just going to sit in the well, heating up until it boils or the system restarts before it does so, giving it some cooler water so that the hotter 9kg can be consumed again. I can't empty the well, though I can deconstruct it, with the gas emptying in the surrounding environment and the water falling into a bottle on the ground.

So I just have to deconstruct the well every time I don't want to use it for an extended period of time? That is massive tedium long term then, has the issue been brought up to Klei before?

[LadenSwallow]

If you feed the water in a loop from a liquid meter set to 1kg always reset by not gate, or selectively by memory toggle, then the liquid in the loop only allows 1kg in all pipe segments, as meters will not add to pipes which already have contents.

[Gurgel]

11 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

I don't think I have made my issue clear.

You have made it clear. Just cool the oil well, that will cool the gas inside. 

[blakemw]

16 hours ago, ZombieDupe said:

I am not entirely sure if the crude oil exchanges temperature with the oil well contents, but what I do know is that the natural gas and the water left inside the well itself do, 

 

The contents of the oil well exist at a particular tile (the "tile of interest") and they exchange heat only with that tile (meaning gas or liquid) and the tile they are sitting on (only if it is solid), so in the below screenshot the internal water bottle will exchange heat with the crude oil and the igneous rock tile below it.

I would presume you have built the Oil Well on Mesh Tiles, meaning that the internal water bottle is sitting in gas, allowing it to only exchange heat with the hot natural gas. If there is liquid on the tile of interest (even a drop of crude should be enough) and adequate thermal mass connected to it (tbh a floor of igneous rock tiles is hard to improve upon) the water will be kept comfortably below boiling even when natural gas is being released.

[cpy]

Simple: don't turn off the oil well and automate turning off the water pipe. EZ!

[psusi]

3 hours ago, cpy said:

Simple: don't turn off the oil well and automate turning off the water pipe. EZ!

That doesn't work because as he explained, you can end up with less than 10kg of water in the well and that isn't enough to get used up by the well, so it just sits there.

[degr]

Keep them flooded and continuously remove gas