Is this natural gas generator any good?

[Arash70]

I was thinking since none of my main bases used more than 2000w so far at early game, 8:10 might be the perfect ratio for natural gas generators, so I built this:

The idea is natural gas and polluted water will add up at the beginning, so you can run it for a long time and eventually get more power out of it.

Natural gas generators make 6400watts at their peak and consumers (fertilizer makers + pumps) use 1200 watts at their peak which means this whole power plant can eventually make up to an average of 5.2 kws (I guess).

The question is how efficient is this and is it any good?

Smart batteries run at 30-100 bottom floor, 25-100 second floor, 20-100 third floor, 15-100 4th floor.

 

And here's the save file:

Natural Gas Test.sav

[Kasuha]

I wonder why you consider 8:10 a perfect ratio but I guess anything between 3:1 and 9:20 is fine. It will run decent regardless if you run it on natural gas or polluted water, or mixture of both. You will definitely need to supply some fuel to it, though.

Regarding the design, you don't seem to be managing cooling of your generators. Polluted water falling around generators in lower floors falls too fast to have any significant cooling effect I believe, and the top generator is not getting any cooling at all. 

 

[Arash70]

11 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

I wonder why you consider 8:10 a perfect ratio but I guess anything between 3:1 and 9:20 is fine. It will run decent regardless if you run it on natural gas or polluted water, or mixture of both. You will definitely need to supply some fuel to it, though.

Smart batteries, low early game power usage and gradual increase in power usage, gas buildup

11 minutes ago, Kasuha said:

Regarding the design, you don't seem to be managing cooling of your generators. Polluted water falling around generators in lower floors falls too fast to have any significant cooling effect I believe, and the top generator is not getting any cooling at all. 

 

It's just a crude design to test if this works, I know there should be room for wheezeworts in there + some airflow tiles to cool the natural gas generators, but I was wondering if this would work on the long run.

During my tests water and power looked very stable to me and I managed to power ~40 heaters at its peak.

[chemie]

I have never needed cooling of either fertilizers or Nat gas gens.  I do have Nat gas drip onto pet gens.

[JonnyMonroe]

Your ideal ratio should really be dictated by the availability of incoming fuels. 3:1 if it's entirely water fueled, I think 1:2 if it's gas fueled? (Not at a computer to check). For mixed fuel calculate your fuel ratio and interpolate between those figures.

Also i wouldn't put wheezes directly inside this setup. Better to build a hydrogen room next to it for the wheezes or use some form of machine cooling. Wheezes gain a lot from sitting in the right gas, and polluted o2 is not the right gas.

[Kasuha]

22 minutes ago, Arash70 said:

During my tests water and power looked very stable to me and I managed to power ~40 heaters at its peak.

It definitely can't work as a closed system, not infinitely. The pool of polluted water can keep your synthesizers busy for a long time but the 8 synthesizers only produce enough gas for 2 and 2/3 generators running constantly. If you keep more of them busy, you'll eventually run out of natural gas stored in the synthesizer room, even before you run out of polluted water.

21 minutes ago, chemie said:

I have never needed cooling of either fertilizers or Nat gas gens.  I do have Nat gas drip onto pet gens

No cooling at all? Not even pre-cooling the gas? I'd like to see your design.

11 minutes ago, JonnyMonroe said:

I think 1:2 if it's gas fueled?

The exact ratio is 1:2.222222... or 9:20. But 1:2 is fine with one synthesizer running out of material every once in a while.

[Arash70]

11 minutes ago, JonnyMonroe said:

Your ideal ratio should really be dictated by the availability of incoming fuels. 3:1 if it's entirely water fueled, I think 1:2 if it's gas fueled? (Not at a computer to check). For mixed fuel calculate your fuel ratio and interpolate between those figures.

Also i wouldn't put wheezes directly inside this setup. Better to build a hydrogen room next to it for the wheezes or use some form of machine cooling. Wheezes gain a lot from sitting in the right gas, and polluted o2 is not the right gas.

That used to work well without smart batteries, now when you use less power natural gas builds up.

I think the design above might be just perfect for the long run.

Also, natural gas is very similar to hydrogen when it comes to cooling.

---

 

@Kasuha The idea is to use gas build up + power fluctuations to its advantage, I know it can't be at its peak for an infinite amount of time, but the thing is if you run it long enough at the beginning, you'll have enough gas to run it at its peak for a long time.

You see, at <=1600 watts you use 2 generators, at 1600 to 3200 watts you use 4, at 3200 to 4800 watts you use 6, and at 4800 to 6400 watts you use all the 8 generators; and then there is lots of down time in between.

 

[Kasuha]

1 minute ago, Arash70 said:

That used to work well without smart batteries, now when you use less power natural gas builds up.

To prevent that, you can use atmo switch in the synthesizer room and switch your synthesizers off when the room pressure exceeds certain value. That will stop adding more natural gas and will keep the 'fuel' in the form of polluted water until you need some gas again.

8 minutes ago, Arash70 said:

You see, at <=1600 watts you use 2 generators, at 1600 to 3200 watts you use 4, at 3200 to 4800 watts you use 6, and at 4800 to 6400 watts you use all the 8 generators; and then there is lots of down time in between.

The regulation is even smoother than that. If the draw is e.g. 1700 watts, it will be switching between running 2 and 4 generators and will provide just the required power (plus a little bit will be lost in batteries but let's neglect that).

But if the total average draw exceeds 2133 W, you'll start running out of stored gas. So if you're sure that you won't exceed that average draw, or if you have some external gas supply to use when the limit gets exceeded, it's fine.

But as I wrote before, anything between 3:1 (gas neutral at full power) and 9:20 (polluted water neutral at full power) is fine and workable. And if you use less power than the maximum it can generate, then you use just part of your generators and part of synthesizers and can adjust the ratio as you need.

 

[Arash70]

1 hour ago, Kasuha said:

To prevent that, you can use atmo switch in the synthesizer room and switch your synthesizers off when the room pressure exceeds certain value. That will stop adding more natural gas and will keep the 'fuel' in the form of polluted water until you need some gas again.

The regulation is even smoother than that. If the draw is e.g. 1700 watts, it will be switching between running 2 and 4 generators and will provide just the required power (plus a little bit will be lost in batteries but let's neglect that).

But if the total average draw exceeds 2133 W, you'll start running out of stored gas. So if you're sure that you won't exceed that average draw, or if you have some external gas supply to use when the limit gets exceeded, it's fine.

But as I wrote before, anything between 3:1 (gas neutral at full power) and 9:20 (polluted water neutral at full power) is fine and workable. And if you use less power than the maximum it can generate, then you use just part of your generators and part of synthesizers and can adjust the ratio as you need.

 

Hmmm you're right, this seems to be very inefficient

33% power efficiency

 

[SamLogan]

Now, you can't have a stable closed set up, given :

1 NG Generator needs 3 Fertilizers to have it 60g/s of NG.

But 1 Fertilizers need 3 NG Generators tp have enough polluted water.

Automation will change nothing, I've tried and it fail. You need an outside source (NG or water). Personnaly, I don't use anymore or just one or two Fertillizer given they use a lot of water and the water is pretty rare with this patch.

[chemie]

4 hours ago, Kasuha said:

No cooling at all? Not even pre-cooling the gas? I'd like to see your design.

Nothing.  Just build in a regular room.

Fertilizers run at 57C

Nat Gas run at 73C

Build out of gold to be safe. Here is save file to see.

 

 

Tragic Bunker.sav

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

Fertilizer outputs Fertilizer at 50C and NG at 30C

NG generator outputs PH2O and CO2 at machine temperature

It's safe to seal them in a chamber without any cooling method, but I'd prefer to cool NG generator to a low temperature to get a great amount of cold PH2O/Pice.