Modern Petroleum Boiler Heat Injectors

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

I've been looking into designs for petroleum boilers, as I aim to build one in my world. I used to always build ye ol' Francis John design, but lately I've been trying to get away from the standard "youtuber builds". Thus, I've found a lot of discussion on heat exchangers, with the bead waterfall looking like the best one for my purposes. However, I've found little to no discussion about heat injectors, besides those that use flaking, which I'm not sure if I'm emotionally prepared to deal with yet.

What do modern heat injectors look like? Do people still just make a pit and drip oil into it? How about thermal buffers? I should also probably mention that I do plan on using a volcano to power my boiler. Thank you!

[Zarquan]

I usually use steam tiles encased in metal to stabilize the heat transfer in to pretty much any heat injector.  Basically, I but 1000 kg of water in a tile or a row or column of tiles, then I put thermosensors in that to determine if it is too hot or too cold.  I then ensure that all heat is run through the steam.  This reduces fluctuations in the temperature of the thing you are heating, as it increases the thermal mass significantly.

For the oil boiling room, unless you are using flaking, the oil pit with the heat injector at the bottom is still the best we have at the moment.

[meekay]

19 hours ago, EATZYOWAFFLEZ said:

How about thermal buffers?

Tangent, but I've recently found that Ceramic tempshift tiles make good thermal buffers for my volcano tamers, because of its high specific heat and high temperature tolerance.

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

2 hours ago, Zarquan said:

the oil pit with the heat injector at the bottom is still the best we have at the moment.

Does the height of the pit and/or placement of the liquid vent matter?

[Zarquan]

7 hours ago, EATZYOWAFFLEZ said:

Does the height of the pit and/or placement of the liquid vent matter?

A few tiles deep to make sure crude oil can't overflow and cause a blockage.  I mostly see 3 tiles.

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

I have another question that maybe someone could answer: do heat deletion bugs still exist for magma that turns into debris? If so, what's the easiest method to avoid heat deletion?

[Tigin]

Hey, don't hate on flaking! I've found them to be quite consistent since you can set the temperature to basically you want. You still have the failure mode where the heat injector can't keep up but you'll never have broken pipes due to crude oil coming up too hot, the efficiency is great and they're simple to build. I've been experimenting with a cheesy design that relies on insulated granite tiles

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

1 hour ago, Tigin said:

Hey, don't hate on flaking! I've found them to be quite consistent since you can set the temperature to basically you want. You still have the failure mode where the heat injector can't keep up but you'll never have broken pipes due to crude oil coming up too hot, the efficiency is great and they're simple to build. I've been experimenting with a cheesy design that relies on insulated granite tiles

Not trying to hate at all. I just don't quite understand it yet, so for now I'm looking to work with something I can understand.

[Charletrom]

18 hours ago, Zarquan said:

I usually use steam tiles encased in metal to stabilize the heat transfer in to pretty much any heat injector.  Basically, I but 1000 kg of water in a tile or a row or column of tiles, then I put thermosensors in that to determine if it is too hot or too cold.  I then ensure that all heat is run through the steam.  This reduces fluctuations in the temperature of the thing you are heating, as it increases the thermal mass significantly.

For the oil boiling room, unless you are using flaking, the oil pit with the heat injector at the bottom is still the best we have at the moment.

This is the way. There is a mod that lets you build thermo sensor tiles, which helps keep the size of the injector to a minimum.

 

If size is a concern (and you dont want to use buildings added by mods) i’ve found that pulsing the steel door works well. Basically when the oil drops below your set temp, the door pulses on/off at a certain interval to avoid overheating the tiles in contact with the oil. This can be achieved with a timer and a not gate. The duration of the pulses can be calibrated based on the temp of the heat source.

[ghkbrew]

8 hours ago, EATZYOWAFFLEZ said:

I have another question that maybe someone could answer: do heat deletion bugs still exist for magma that turns into debris? If so, what's the easiest method to avoid heat deletion?

Are you talking about the temperature reset bug when a liquid solidifies on top of an existing pile of debris?  That's not strictly a heat deletion bug, but yeah it still exists afaik.  You avoid it by making sure your magma doesn't solidify on top of existing debris.  You can do that by having it solidify in a mesh tile, so the debris is immediately pushed out (even through corners, which can be helpful in some builds).

[GluttonyMain]

Oh, is that why first batch of glass produces so much heat and but after a while its easily managable? I though its the mass smoothign the spikes that helps, but i guess it coudl be the bug you mention.

[wachunga]

The debris bug still exists last I checked. They fixed it for a brief time, but it's been back for awhile now.

 

As for heat injection tech, I like the pimp. Adds magma in a more measured and controlled way then just throwing open a door.

Drop the magma into a mesh tile for corner ejection or into a pool of lead. Surround those with a decent amount of thermal mass, steam works good. Throw in a temp sensor somewhere and that becomes your heat buffer tank.

You can pull heat from the buffer with the standard door method. I prefer using a loop of gas pipes containing hydrogen or steam. It gives much finer control over your boiling chamber temps but is a bit more involved.

Boiling chamber can be your typical vent in/over a pit. If you are competent, it can just be a vent at one end of a 5 tile deep horizontal "pit". That gives smoother flow since the petro flows out immediately, instead of waiting for a cell of petro to blorp up and out of the confines of a vertical pit. Smoother flow is better for exchanger efficiency but the horizontal "pit" is much less forgiving. You have to be confident the crude will boil immediately.

 

 

[EATZYOWAFFLEZ]

1 hour ago, wachunga said:

As for heat injection tech, I like the pimp. Adds magma in a more measured and controlled way then just throwing open a door.

Oh that is very nice. Also I love the name.

1 hour ago, wachunga said:

I prefer using a loop of gas pipes containing hydrogen or steam.

Would that work with just a gas shutoff? I imagine the loop would have to be only partially full as well.

1 hour ago, wachunga said:

it can just be a vent at one end of a 5 tile deep horizontal "pit".

Always wondered why I saw that. Makes sense. Thank you!

[wachunga]

3 hours ago, EATZYOWAFFLEZ said:

Would that work with just a gas shutoff? I imagine the loop would have to be only partially full as well.

Yeah, just a shutoff and power for the shutoff.

I threw this together quick and dirty like to show what I was talking about. I don't recommend you copy this, but fiddle with it in your own way if you want some new ideas to try.

 

And the save:petro boiler start.sav

Switch the temp sensor under the magma dropper. Once you get a pool of molten lead going you can switch the temp sensor in the boiling chamber. Once the boiler gets up to temp, slowly open valve. 100 g/s then 200 g/s etc. Once you get a counterflow going, you can alter the temps in the boiler and buffer to match what kind of throughput you want. Switching to steam in the pipes helps with a higher throughput as well.

[tilebytile]

I did some work on a uranium liquid tile to crude oil bead heat injector for a continuous mode petroleum boiler. ( Forum Post here )
Main advantage: single tick heat transfer is limited to 1/4 delta T so you can run can run really hot.

The reaction of crude to petrol is exothermic in the sense that petroleum of the same temp as crude contains more heat energy.

The drip pit design is secretly genius because it operates in a batch mode sort of. The excess heat energy from the exothermic conversion doesn't matter because you simply take less heat bring the pit up to temps.

I found that my continuous mode designs did not really benefit from the excess energy and it even made the designs unstable without extra regulation.

My key takeaway is: If you find a way to utilize the thermal runaway in continuous mode so you only need to boost temperature while consuming nearly no energy there might be a breakthrough design there, otherwise the need to drain excess heat energy makes it inferior in terms of complexity. No sure about the heat source consumption rate.


A quick sandbox so you get the idea what I tried:
I opted for intercooling the petrol.
One intercooler to limit the temperature of the crude at the top of the heat exchanger to below conversion point ~400C. With 75C crude I got 130C Petrol out so a second intercooler somewhere mid column to drain some more heat so that the crude can cool the petrol down to its own temp would be neat.

[tilebytile]

Maybe this could be turned into a working design