Petroleum boiler problems

[rgduck]

I'm using this core-powered petroleum boiler design I got from an old Francis John video. It usually works great... but every once in a while everything goes to hell.

A sour gas bubble develops here, which stops the petroleum from flowing out. This eventually causes catastrophic levels of pressure, since the crude oil keeps flowing and turning into petroleum, but it can't escape past the gas.

The door closes and allows heat in only when the thermo sensor reads less than 400C, so nothing ought to be getting anywhere near the 538C it takes to turn petroleum into sour gas. Any idea why this happens? Are there better designs for a core powered petroleum boiler out there?

[LadenSwallow]

The unpowered door takes a significant length of time to open/close compared with a powered version which means it will transfer more heat.

 

If you have a petroleum boiler, power shouldn't be a concern anymore, as petrol gens become water positive when you loop the output water back to the oil wells.

[rgduck]

2 hours ago, LadenSwallow said:

The unpowered door takes a significant length of time to open/close compared with a powered version which means it will transfer more heat.

Enough to explain getting up to 583 in the liquid itself, you think? I haven't managed to catch it in the act.

[rgduck]

10 cycles using the powered door without a problem. Not yet certain, but it looks like you solved it. Thanks!

[Joe Dee]

15 hours ago, rgduck said:

Enough to explain getting up to 583 in the liquid itself, you think? I haven't managed to catch it in the act.

The liquid doesn't need to be anywhere near 538 C, it's enough for even just one of the window tiles it's in contact with to be 541+ C. That will cause flaking, i.e. the process of 5 kg petroleum flashing to sour gas. If your sour gas is in amounts of multiples of 5 kg, that's definitely what happened. Otherwise you'd have 700+ kg of sour gas all at once, if the whole cell of petroleum got above 541 C.

[nakomaru]

You can also solve the problem of heating too quickly by reducing thermal diffusivity. For example, you could change the diamond tiles to ordinary ceramic tiles or igneous rock.

[wachunga]

Assuming flaking is the cause, putting a shift plate at the temp sensor should help. It will keep the diamond tiles closer in temp to the petro, meaning the temp sensor is more likely to trigger while the diamond is below flaking temps. And get rid of every other shift plate. They do the exact opposite of what you are trying to achieve with a counterflow heat exchanger. Vacuuming out all the gas would be another helpful step to take.

[rgduck]

10 hours ago, Joe Dee said:

The liquid doesn't need to be anywhere near 538 C, it's enough for even just one of the window tiles it's in contact with to be 541+ C. That will cause flaking, i.e. the process of 5 kg petroleum flashing to sour gas. If your sour gas is in amounts of multiples of 5 kg, that's definitely what happened.

Yup, exactly 10 kg of sour gas every time it happened.

Also it's been 30 cycles without a problem. Powering the door definitely solved the problem.

[Saturnus]

If you really want to be completely safe then then you could attach a smart battery to the door control mechanism so that it can only open if there is enough charge in the battery. This will protect against accidental powerloss.