Oil Boiler v2 - Hyper Magma Efficiency

[AzeTheGreat]

So my previous post had some good feedback, and I've improved my design and incorporated some other elements.  In particular, magma efficiency has gone through the roof, and capacity has increased.

Produces:

• 4.5 kg/s Oil -> Natural Gas
• 0.25 kg/s Magma -> Igneous Rock

That's an increase from 1 kg magma : 1.25 kg natural gas, to 1 kg magma : 18 kg natural gas.

The major change is the thermally buffered doors, which drastically increase magma efficiency, at the cost of some additional automation.  I've also restructured it to hopefully be easier to access in a real game, and to be more modular: any sort of cooling can be hooked up to the right side wall, rather than being centrally designed around a steam turbine.

The left side has automation under the "volcano", but it is squeezed tightly enough that a second module could be theoretically mirrored.  The central shaft is the boiler itself - oil drops down a heat exchanger, though a vacuum lock, into the heating chamber.  Natural gas is pumped up through the heat exchanger by a door pump, then back down through the preheating/cooling zone by another door pump.  The right side is where cooling modules could be attached, most likely steam turbines or polluted water boilers.  The bottom chambers ship materials around while maintaining a buffer - they were rearranged slightly to minimize an issue.

Spoiler

(I just noticed that I apparently still have crude oil in my coolant pipes, surprised that's not been an issue).

The only two actual problems with this build right now:

• The oil dropper will occasionally cause flooding messages to pop up for split seconds.  This is more prevalent if you try to increase the capacity beyond 5kg/s.
• If you create a save at the exact moment a sweeper is moving an item, and then later load said save, the item will be dropped.  This can completely break the first shipping chamber, since it creates steam.  My current solution to this is to close a door with a clock sensor and switch - meaning autosaves are safe, and it can be made safe before normal saves.

Any suggestions on solutions would be nice, though they're both minor and I doubt can be improved upon without significant downsides.

Other general improvements I will be making:

• Duplicant access/traversal.  This will probably end up being a lot of vacuum locks, but should be worth it.
• Fine tuning of heat removal.  Currently the hot end of the preheating section is around 370 C, when it could be theoretically pushed up to 400 C safely - I want to see how close I can get for maximum efficiency.
• Foolproofing.  I'd like the design to be able to safely handle any backed up outputs, or empty inputs, without catastrophic failure.

Any input on this is appreciated!  Special thanks to @Carnis for providing an excellent inspirational design (built in survival no less).

Save file: I fixed the plumbing, and set it up so that it should just run for a bit uninterrupted.  Check the igneous rock stored in the compactor down and to the left to measure kg magma consumed / cycle.  Ignore the versioning discrepancy, there was an internal prototype. Oil Boiler v3.sav

 

[kuroko0820]

that automation setup is killing me

 

[AzeTheGreat]

1 minute ago, kuroko0820 said:

that automation setup is killing me

Got any suggestions?  I'm far from the best at automation, and it's a rather brute force door pump...

Really, the main spaghetti factor comes from trying to keep in compact.  It could look all neat but then it'd take up a ton of space...

[Carnis]

Can I get that savefile?

On theory, since My hot end runs at 535, my system should be near/better than this efficiency. But its not. I observed strange heatleak on My latest improvement attempt. So could be the magma, vacuum/tempshift, door design destroys some heat.

If I could implement your efficiency, a Minor volcano could boil 10/s.

The conveyor is brilliant, can use sub 700 stone, and still collect heat.

[cpy]

Holy hell! This is huge. How does it work?

[AzeTheGreat]

22 minutes ago, Carnis said:

Can I get that savefile?

On theory, since My hot end runs at 535, my system should be near/better than this efficiency. But its not. I observed strange heatleak on My latest improvement attempt. So could be the magma, vacuum/tempshift, door design destroys some heat.

If I could implement your efficiency, a Minor volcano could boil 10/s.

Just edited it into the main post.  I should clarify that the hot end at 370 C I mentioned was specifically for the preheating area.  The main heat exchanger has a hot end around 500 I believe, and the boiling chamber itself stays as close to 530 as possible.

20 minutes ago, cpy said:

Holy hell! This is huge. How does it work?

The boiler itself is really only the central column area, so it's not nearly as large as it looks, the whole system definitely would be large though.

Are there any parts you're particularly confused about?  The general idea is that magma provides heat, turning oil into natural gas.  That can be achieved by just dripping oil on magma though, so the rest of the setup is to: capture solidified igneous rock and use the heat, improve the efficiency by preheating oil with natural gas, and cool the natural gas to usable temperatures.

[Carnis]

Anyway, congrats. Its The first clear improvement over My best build Ive seen here on the forums..

Now just need it in a modular/manageable form so my new fatalistic/miserable dups can build it.

Given hyperefficiency, how would it work with an iron volcano?

[AzeTheGreat]

1 minute ago, Carnis said:

Anyway, congrats. Its The first clear improvement over My best build Ive seen here on the forums..

Now just need it in a modular/manageable form so my new fatalistic/miserable dups can build it.

Given hyperefficiency, how would it work with an iron volcano?

If you want it modular, it'd be pretty easy to stretch it out vertically and separate parts as needed.  It basically goes magma shipping setup -> boiling room -> door pumps -> heat exchanger -> door pump -> cooling zone -> gas pumps.  This design might even be able to push up to 10 kg/s itself, I've not checked.

Well iron has a cp of 0.449, and comes out at 2226.9 C I believe?  Which gives about 1000 kJ/kg of eruption.  Magma on the other hand has a cp of 1 and comes out at 1726.9 C, so that's 1727 kJ/kg.  Since magma has 1.727 times as much energy, I'd expect an iron volcano might have a ratio around 1 kg iron : 10 kg natural gas.

Of course, that's a pretty rough estimate since we're obviously not using up all the energy in the output, iron has a higher proportion of it's energy in the 'usable' zone, and I'm sure different material properties could alter behavior and shift efficiency.

[cpy]

1 hour ago, AzeTheGreat said:

Are there any parts you're particularly confused about?

Why you need that conveyor belt there?

[KittenIsAGeek]

1 minute ago, cpy said:

Why you need that conveyor belt there?

The conveyor belt is part of the pre-heat part of the cooker.  Basically the magma cools into igneous rock.  The rock is still VERY hot, so its loaded onto the conveyor and the belt takes it through the boiler.  The rock cools down, the oil heats up.

[AzeTheGreat]

1 minute ago, cpy said:

Why you need that conveyor belt there?

The magma solidifies at 1409 C.  Once it turns into an item, the rate of heat transfer slows way down since it's in a vacuum.  So I put it on a conveyor and convey it directly through the heat exchanger, which brings it into contact with metal tiles and gas, allowing us to get more heat out of it.  It also means we can use the igenous rock that's below 530 C to help preheat incoming oil, when that heat would otherwise be useless.

So, technically it's 100% optional.  This would run without it.  But it'd use more magma and be less efficient.

[WanderingKid]

1 minute ago, AzeTheGreat said:

So, technically it's 100% optional.  This would run without it.  But it'd use more magma and be less efficient.

How do you keep the autosweeper out of melting itself to pieces?  Is that simply part of keeping a vacuum lock on the lower middle area?  I had understood the sweeper would get heat from holding onto a piece to be delivered.

[AzeTheGreat]

3 minutes ago, WanderingKid said:

How do you keep the autosweeper out of melting itself to pieces?  Is that simply part of keeping a vacuum lock on the lower middle area?  I had understood the sweeper would get heat from holding onto a piece to be delivered.

Yup, that's my vacuum automation nonsense down there.  If it's in a vacuum, no heat is transferred to the sweeper from the rock.  However, they still accumulate heat from performing work, so it's necessary to occasionally cool them down.  That's what the mechanical door + water is for - it periodically closes, forcing the cool water onto the sweeper and loader.  As the water warms up, it's cooled by the pipe system.

[Yoma_Nosme]

If you could make the room with the water 1 or 2 tiles bigger on the right so you can throw 1 or 2 wheezworts in. So when the conveyor drops a piece and steam gets created there is an atmosphere, wheez starts to work an cools the steam to water and your back to vacuum

[AzeTheGreat]

8 minutes ago, Yoma_Nosme said:

If you could make the room with the water 1 or 2 tiles bigger on the right so you can throw 1 or 2 wheezworts in. So when the conveyor drops a piece and steam gets created there is an atmosphere, wheez starts to work an cools the steam to water and your back to vacuum

While nice in concept, that wouldn't work anywhere near quickly enough.  Keep in mind that this is dropping 1400 C rock into the water - that's a ton of energy that it has to remove very quickly.

The general idea is decent though - I might see if I could increase the cooling rate there somehow...if it can go quickly enough it might be able to prevent the occasional drop from hurting anything.

[AzeTheGreat]

12 hours ago, Carnis said:

Given hyperefficiency, how would it work with an iron volcano?

So I decided to test this.  It definitely seems to be over 1:12, but I'm guesstimating a bit because there's another issue...iron is so much denser that a lot more falls at once onto the tile, meaning it solidifies into a block fairly frequently.  I'll have to play around with some other dropping mechanisms and see if I can prevent that before it's usable.

[Carnis]

I have... improvements..

I tested your system, but I did some changes. The map had 540 kg abyssalite on the pressure plate, so the save does NOT work, when you load.

You MUST delete the abyssalite, or all the conveyor belt voids instantly..

I set the valve to 10kg/s, and the second sweeper arm automation to 70s, instead of 90s. After that the system processed the first few 100kg:s of oil a bit wonky, and I believe some got deleted, then it adjusted.. and worked perfectly.. I ran it with 48 tonnes, ended up with 600kg/tile on the gas pumps, but no molten pumps.

*

With 10kg/s, and 70s sweeper automation (with 90s, liquid kept building up too much at 10l/s) on the emptier the system used 4900kg magma / 48000kg gas -> So that was a wee bit less than 1:10, still, the first 12k went thru with a better conversion rate than the next 12k & so on, so it seems to be more optimised to 4.5kg. I do not know the reason, but I assume its got to do with your rather -hard to debug- buffers / filters in the automations. But the system boils 10kg/sec without a hickup. The other thing is, because there is not a tempshift plate on the boiler, its incredibly accurate at boiling the gas to exactly 541, and not more.

*

The improvement suggestion I have is here.. Your igneous rocks under the petrol to gas-tile cool to 500C, then the ones above them and to the right stay at around 800C. This then re-heats gas that is supposed to chill, when it moves higher.. If you do this 4-abyssalite bridge loop, then your bottom conveyor will loop the first 10 conveoyr belt of igneous, providing stable output igneous rock, and actually improving throughput.. as it will keep boiling oil on the plate longer. When theres room on the conveyor, the loop will unwind to the left, but at a stable temp.

 

**

Your system is so much more effective, with less heat-recapture (the gas sometimes leaves at >280C), that I believe my boiler-plate deletes a fair bit of heat from magma with door openings/closings.

[AzeTheGreat]

Yeah I noticed the abyssalite this morning.  I'll take a look at these changes, thanks!

[Megouski]

As a noob, stepping in this thread reminds me of watching Factorio logic self-build its own infinite superfactory with drones. 

 

**** sake people dont let this thing become too self aware

[WanderingKid]

4 hours ago, Megouski said:

As a noob, stepping in this thread reminds me of watching Factorio logic self-build its own infinite superfactory with drones. 

 

**** sake people dont let this thing become too self aware

WTF IS SKYNET?

I'm sorry, Mr. Conner... it started as a game.

[FenrirZeroZero]

If you would leave the igneous pile in the boiler you would not lose the heat. It would work as an energy save. Or you could place a oil reserve below the boiler and drop the stone in there to preheat it. 

Basically swap your sweeper with an ~ 50 Tile oil storage and just drop the igneous in there.

The reserve needs to be isulated of course. 

[Neotuck]

1 hour ago, FenrirZeroZero said:

If you would leave the igneous pile in the boiler you would not lose the heat. It would work as an energy save. Or you could place a oil reserve below the boiler and drop the stone in there to preheat it. 

Bad idea

As the rock piles up it combines it's heat into an average temperature from the hot rock dropped onto the cooled rock (this is due to an ever increasing thermal capacity as the rocks pile up) The longer the boiler runs the slower it take to heat up and transfer it to the oil.

[AzeTheGreat]

In addition to @Neotuck's point, I also want to harvest the igneous rock, which means not dropping it (a long time ago I played around with a door system to actually get it into the oil, but it'd have been at least 30 doors and a lot of automation to get it in and out).

I am probably going to test out only circulating the igneous in the boiling chamber, since the natural gas should have enough heat to preheat the crude oil alone, and that'd reduce the cooling needed.

[Zarquan]

I like this build.  It handles the cooling of the magma without having to dig very nicely and still allows you to harvest the igneous rock.  How much oil can this boil per second before blocks start forming? 

You currently have it set for 4.5 kg/s on the oil, but how high can it go before things start breaking?

[Lifegrow]

19 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

I like this build.  It handles the cooling of the magma without having to dig very nicely and still allows you to harvest the igneous rock.  How much oil can this boil per second before blocks start forming? 

You currently have it set for 4.5 kg/s on the oil, but how high can it go before things start breaking?

Any magma boiler can handle 10kg/s - the question that really matters is how long do you want your magma to last - thats what @AzeTheGreat/ @Carnis have been trying to tinker with.

Don't forget, 10kg/s of cooked oil is 10kg/s of natural gas - enough for 111 natural gas gens. I've built some pretty monstrous bases in my time playing this game, and i've never had a legitimate need for that much power.

Especially when you consider coal still exists, as does hydrogen, steam, and also petrol is better than it's ever been.