PSA: You should thermally separate your boiler room from your heat exchanger.

[Zarquan]

I often see people build their petroleum boilers with the boiler room connected to the first layer of their counterflow heat exchanger.  However, this is inefficient, as you are using your heat source to heat what is meant to be cooled, which can lead to things like broken pipes and inefficient use of your heat source. 

Here I have two almost identical petroleum boilers.

The left one has the petroleum in contact on the first layer in contact with the first layer.  The right one has a thermal separation in the form of an escher waterfall.

On both, the crude oil enters at 76.9 C.

The left one has the petroleum leave the exchanger at 111 C, and the one on the right has the petroleum leave at 109.4 C.

Measuring heat energy from the heat source, which is just a preheated bar of steam set to 1000 C at the start and left to run for about 7132 seconds, the left boiler lost 218.2 more MJ of heat energy than the one on the right, which is almost exactly the difference in heat energy in the petroleum.

It also makes your pipes less susceptible to breaking, as the last radiant pipe is exposed to 377.5 C rather than 394.8 C.

This simple separation saves my design about 6.7% of the energy just from one waterfall while also making the design safer.

Also, you don't need to use an escher waterfall if you build your boiler one tile higher or your heat exchanger one tile lower.

[superscooper]

That is brilliant. I had honestly never even given a thought to separating the two.

[6Havok9]

Imho normal waterfall is the way to go: no gases ever inside the boiler, and provides a convenient entry from the top if you build the rows two tall, allowing dupe access. 

Which you don't need to allow, ofc, but you can never be sure enough.

[Zarquan]

2 hours ago, 6Havok9 said:

Imho normal waterfall is the way to go: no gases ever inside the boiler, and provides a convenient entry from the top if you build the rows two tall, allowing dupe access. 

Yeah, it doesn't need to be an escher waterfall, but I like escher waterfalls.  My thinking is that dupe access could also be handled by an opening in the airflow tiles on the top, but it is also not really needed if it is set up right.