Petroleum generator needs to be balanced

[Neotuck]

Currently a petroleum generator needs 3000 g/s 2000 g/s of petroleum to generate 2000 W power

While the natural gas generator needs 90 g/s of natural gas to generate 800 W power

This means if we take the same 3000 g/s petroleum and boil it into gas you can run over 33 natural generators for a total of 26666 W of power (that's over 13 times the power of petroleum generator for the SAME amount of fuel)

This means if we take the same 2000 g/s petroleum and boil it into gas you can run over 22 natural generators for a total of 17777 W of power (that's almost 9 times the power of petroleum generator for the SAME amount of fuel)

Petroleum generators need to be balanced to make them worth building.  Ether increase the power or decrease the fuel requirements. 

( EDIT )

Thank you @Michi01 for pointing out the fuel requirements have been reduced from 3000 g/s to 2000 g/s

[blash365]

I grant you that the numbers are indeed unbalanced, but you are dismissing the fact that:

• you need to boil oil/petr @ 300+°C (only achievable by volcanos or certain geysers
• you need to cool the resulting NG to pumpable levels

Take your own thread as an example for how many tricks/exploits you have to employ to make this cooker actually work.

1. vacuumed geyser
2. vacuumed mechanical door heat exchange
3. liquid lock
4. temperature deletion with water sieve

 

So far only few of us have been able to build this outside of sandbox mode. I am not saying it is not possible, but it certainly isnt the most obvious alternative at the moment.

My point is: make it easily usable for everyone *cough* high temperature pumps *cough* and rebalance the fuel to energy ratio in the same step.

[yoakenashi]

1 hour ago, blash365 said:

only few of us have been able to build this outside of sandbox mode

I feel special now  Also my design only used the liquid lock, no other tricks that you listed.

I can see both sides of the argument. It was not easy to build the iron volcano oil boiler, but it was definitely overpowered once I had it running.

Ultimately I think I would leave the discrepancy alone as I think building complex machines for significant gain part of the game’s appeal.

[trukogre]

Also: in reality, octane has almost twice the energy density per kg  that methane does, so this discrepancy is not only game-breaking but needlessly unrealistic.

 

@yoakenashi:  building complex machines for gain is indeed much of the game's appeal, but A. the energy density ratio(gain) here is too high.  B.  it's hilariously unrealistic.

[Coolthulhu]

Would be cool if oil boilers acted more like refineries: only splitting the oil into parts, not cracking it into gas for massive energy gain.

Polluted water already splits into two resources on boil.

Also, refineries delete 50% of their input mass. They could at least drop coal (representing bitumen) to compensate.

[Zarquan]

7 hours ago, blash365 said:

you need to boil oil/petr @ 300+°C (only achievable by volcanos or certain geysers

I diagree with this.  You can also use aquatuners (annoying) or metal refineries (silly) to do it.  Did you know magma can be used as a coolant in the metal refinery?

I agree that the petroleum generator should be better than it is. 

 

[ImpalerWrG]

4 hours ago, trukogre said:

Also: in reality, octane has almost twice the energy density per kg  that methane does, so this discrepancy is not only game-breaking but needlessly unrealistic.

 

@yoakenashi:  building complex machines for gain is indeed much of the game's appeal, but A. the energy density ratio(gain) here is too high.  B.  it's hilariously unrealistic.

 

No Methane is a bit higher then Octane per kg, 55.6 MJ/kg vs 47.9 MJ/kg, Octane is higher per volume though.

Still it's not a proper fit, If we kept Petroleum as is and assumed it to be ~45 MJ/kg then the Natural Gas generator should consume exactly 1000g/s of Gas to be at it's real energy density.  But while were at it lets look at all the fuels.

The highest qualities of Coal are only 27 MJ/kg but the Coal Generator produces almost the same power per kg of coal as the petroleum generator makes per kg of Petroleum.  If you adjusted Petroleum efficiency up to be correct relative to Coal it should only consume 2000g/s or 1 g per W.  And then if we adjusted the Natural Gas generator relative to that it would need to burn 650 g/s.  And lastly the Hydrogen energy density would need to come down a bunch with the generator consuming 250 g/s

[trukogre]

59 minutes ago, ImpalerWrG said:

 

No Methane is a bit higher then Octane per kg, 55.6 MJ/kg vs 47.9 MJ/kg, Octane is higher per volume though.

Still it's not a proper fit, If we kept Petroleum as is and assumed it to be ~45 MJ/kg then the Natural Gas generator should consume exactly 1000g/s of Gas to be at it's real energy density.  But while were at it lets look at all the fuels.

The highest qualities of Coal are only 27 MJ/kg but the Coal Generator produces almost the same power per kg of coal as the petroleum generator makes per kg of Petroleum.  If you adjusted Petroleum efficiency up to be correct relative to Coal it should only consume 2000g/s or 1 g per W.  And then if we adjusted the Natural Gas generator relative to that it would need to burn 650 g/s.  And lastly the Hydrogen energy density would need to come down a bunch with the generator consuming 250 g/s

You're right, I was looking at the wrong column, ED per m3 instead of per kg, thanks for correction and other information.

[BlueLance]

3 hours ago, Zarquan said:

I diagree with this.  You can also use aquatuners (annoying) or metal refineries (silly) to do it.  Did you know magma can be used as a coolant in the metal refinery?

I agree that the petroleum generator should be better than it is. 

 

How do you get your aquatuner to boil oil. it overheats at 175.

Also I never did the maths neotuck, but now you ruined my dreams... I have always stored petroleum for a rainy day, but I think if you have a volcano, petroleum is unneeded and if you do not, then petroleum has a use. 

I suppose you can use magma for a fairly long time if your lucky and the neutronium hasn't encased most of it.

[Neotuck]

5 hours ago, Zarquan said:

I diagree with this.  You can also use aquatuners (annoying) or metal refineries (silly) to do it.

To reach 300C? 

They over heat at 175C so how is that possible? 

[Oozinator]

If you ask me, all that balancing stuff could wait. Enough broken stuff ingame, to fix first and after that it could be balanced...
 

[abud]

I agree that it is need rebalance, good suggestion and feedback to devs. I prefer reduce fuel requirement.

Before it is changed, I'll just avoid petroleum generator. Need more NG but don't have volcano, just pour oil into tungsten in magma chamber like I did in ranch II.

[Michi01]

16 hours ago, Neotuck said:

Currently a petroleum generator needs 3000 g/s of petroleum to generate 2000 W power

I believe it has been changed to 2000 g/s in the beta.

[BlueLance]

Yeah it has been reduced to 2000g/s, but still a pretty big difference.

[Neotuck]

2 hours ago, Michi01 said:

I believe it has been changed to 2000 g/s in the beta.

I edited the post, thank you 

[BlueLance]

but still, 2000g/s is still less than what you get from boiling it. If you can deal with the heat etc then boiling oil is probably more efficient.

[ImpalerWrG]

The recent change to 2000 g/s for Petroleum Generator means that coal and Petroleum have correct relative energy densities now, so it seems likely that future adjustments will be make relative to this.  Per my earlier numbers we can expect..

650 g/s consumed for Natural Gas Generator for 800 W, or for more round numbers 500 g/s for 600 W

250 g/s consumed by Hydrogen Generator for 800 W, note that this would be the output of exactly 2 Electrolizers running non stop, and the Hydrogen Generator can power 6.6 Electrolizers currently, so you still have plentiful net energy.  In fact I'd raise Electrolizers power requirements to 200 W which would mean exactly half the Hydrogen Generators power would need to be feed back into making new Hydrogen and the rest of the base receives a net 400 W, vs the current 697 W surplus.  This would help to make Algae Terrarium based oxygen production a more viable alternative.

Lastly for the boiling of Petroleum into Natural gas to not produce net energy (even when using 'free' volcanic heat) we just need the solid residue that Coolthulu recommends, the ratio need to be 60% Natural gas, 40 % Coal when boiling Petroleum.  

1200 g Natural Gas generates 1476 W, 700 g Coal yields 480 W = 1956 W < 2000 W produced by 2000 g Petroleum

[Zarquan]

7 hours ago, BlueLance said:

How do you get your aquatuner to boil oil. it overheats at 175.

Also I never did the maths neotuck, but now you ruined my dreams... I have always stored petroleum for a rainy day, but I think if you have a volcano, petroleum is unneeded and if you do not, then petroleum has a use. 

I suppose you can use magma for a fairly long time if your lucky and the neutronium hasn't encased most of it.

 

5 hours ago, Neotuck said:

To reach 300C? 

They over heat at 175C so how is that possible? 

The aquatuner overheats at 175, but it doesn't stop working at that point unless they changed it and I haven't noticed.  If you left one running in a vacuum, it would reach over 1000C and could melt and you would get refined metal.  Unfortunately, it would break regularly and you would have to keep deconstructing it and building new ones, which is why I say it's annoying.  But it has no net material cost.

When you use magma in the metal refinery, you don't use up the magma.  You pipe the magma in to the metal refinery as coolant.  If the metal refinery is in a vacuum, it doesn't pick up any heat from the magma.  Then, you refine iron and the magma gets all the thermal energy.  You then use that heated magma to boil petroleum.  You can get magma in a pump by simply putting a pump in the magma.  The pump will break fairly quickly, but then you have magma in the pipes and you can just keep recirculating it through your metal refinery, continually adding heat then transferring it to the oil.  You do occasionally have to run water on the refinery to cool it off, but that can be done with automation.  This is what I was working on in the dark and cold times after tepidizers were fixed and before the volcanoes appeared.  Unfortunately, this scheme consumes ore, which means it is not sustainable. 

The problem with the petroleum generators is a bit more fundamental.  The fact that there is so much mass in liquid than gas means the power that you get from it has to be low or else you could run the system for an absurd amount of time if they gave as much power as natural gas per unit mass.  The only semi-viable ways to fix it using the buildings would be to buff the petroleum generators to produce ungodly amounts of power per unit mass of petroleum OR nerf the natural gas generators so that they are essentially worthless.  Or change the physics of the game.

[Oozinator]

18 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

When you use magma in the metal refinery, you don't use up the magma.  You pipe the magma in to the metal refinery as coolant.  If the metal refinery is in a vacuum, it doesn't pick up any heat from the magma.  Then, you refine iron and the magma gets all the thermal energy.  You then use that heated magma to boil petroleum.  You can get magma in a pump by simply putting a pump in the magma.  The pump will break fairly quickly, but then you have magma in the pipes and you can just keep recirculating it through your metal refinery, continually adding heat then transferring it to the oil.  You do occasionally have to run water on the refinery to cool it off, but that can be done with automation.  This is what I was working on in the dark and cold times after tepidizers were fixed and before the volcanoes appeared.  Unfortunately, this scheme consumes ore, which means it is not sustainable.

Do you like the temperature handling of the game?
 

[Neotuck]

 

42 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

You pipe the magma in to the metal refinery as coolant.

how do you do that without overheating the liquid pump?

 

[ImpalerWrG]

Neotuck:  It's helpful if you read the prior paragraph.  That's what it would need to be to fix the issue you point out in the OP, see my math as to how you eliminate free energy from boiling Petroleum.

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, ImpalerWrG said:

Neotuck:  That's what it would need to be to fix your problem, see my math as to how you eliminate free energy from boiling Petroleum.

my bad, I skimmed your post without reading the whole thing

[Yoma_Nosme]

I think that explosions/fire will be added sometime "soonish"

So as good as boiling oil/petrol to Nat gas with magma is in comparison I think it will become unavailable then bc it will explode or burn. But for now natgas > petrol

[Zarquan]

3 hours ago, Neotuck said:

how do you do that without overheating the liquid pump?

You don't stop it from overheating.  The pump breaks fairly quickly.  But before it breaks, you can pump more than enough magma in to the pipes.  Once it is in the pipes, you use it as a heat source, then when it gets cooler, run it to the refinery to heat it again and repeat.  Since it never leaves the piped system, it can run for as long as you have ore with which you can run the refinery.  You can also use molten metal or other things as the coolant if you want.

By the way, there is something you haven't taken in to account.  It's a little nitpicky, but I'll do the math. 

There is a cost in pumping the natural gas to the generators.  Each gram per second of natural gas gets you 8.89 W.  For 240 W, you can send 500 g/s of natural gas to the generators, which is 4444.44 W.  That means that the system would actually get you 4204.44 W, accounting for the pump.  That means natural gas generators only actually give 756.8 W of power each after production, ignoring any costs of creating the natural gas in the first place.

Crude oil to petroleum is more complicated and costs different amounts for each method.  If the pump is in crude oil and it is pumped to a refinery, you get 5000 g/s of petroleum transferred for 720 W.  Petroleum generators give 1 W when given 1 g/s (in cosmic), so that means they 5000 W using this method.  Accounting for the cost, its 4280 W profit.  This results in 1712 W from a petroleum generator.  If the crude oil comes from an oil well, then it performs better.

Another method is to boil the crude oil to petroleum and use that to fuel the generators.  Ignoring any cooling costs that may be required, it costs 480 W to move 10,000g/s petroleum.  That means a net gain of 9520 W from this method from the two pumps, which means 1904 W per generator using this method.

I spent way too much time on this...And I don't think it adds anything significant....

 

[abud]

Speaking about magma in pipes, why not molten glass? It is already in pipes since we produce it. Am I wrong?