Sulfur Suggestion

[Kabrute]

 irl sulfur is used to lower the combustion temperature of other compounds, like gunpowder, so it kind of makes sense to use sulfur to boost coal genes power output, as such I am recommending that power stations recipe be updated to sulfur

[Coolthulhu]

That's pretty far fetched, especially with coal, because all coal power plants are heat engines and thus wouldn't benefit from lower heat of combustion. If realism is of any concern, this won't work.

A short list of actual, real life uses that would make sense in ONI:

• Component in fertilizers
• Extraction of phosphorus from phosphate ores, in fertilizer production
• (As sulfuric acid) Catalyst in petroleum refining
• (As sulfuric acid) Lead-acid batteries
• Bactericide in food preservation
• Vulcanized rubber

[D.L.S.]

Lower ignition temperature and energy density if mixed with carbon, but it work only if both substances are fine particles, so it work in gun powder, but if you mix big chunks of coal with chunks of sulfur and ignite - sulfur will burn first and then, after almost no sulfur left, will start burning coal.

By itself sulfur(and h2s gas) can be used as fuel(in some burner or open fire), but you will need to deal with toxic so2 gas as its combustion product.

[Saturnus]

6 hours ago, Kabrute said:

 irl sulfur is used to lower the combustion temperature of other compounds, like gunpowder, so it kind of makes sense to use sulfur to boost coal genes power output, as such I am recommending that power stations recipe be updated to sulfur

Engines work on the basic principle of temperature differential. Lower temperature means less power and less potential efficiency.

[Kabrute]

Which engines?  afaik only the steam engine uses temp differential, the rest are consuming resources for power without saying if they are micro steam engines or valve combustion engines.  If they are combustion engines a lower temperature differential increases efficiency hence the use of sulfur in some diesel fuels. 

@Saturnus
TLDR; if all genes are turbines you are correct, if valve compression based then this has merit.

@Coolthulhu

Thats where I was originally going with the post but derailed into something easy to implement in game....

[jude12341]

Sulphur could be used for a more better water purification process to remove germs and produce less polluted dirt

 

[Coolthulhu]

7 hours ago, Kabrute said:

Which engines?  afaik only the steam engine uses temp differential, the rest are consuming resources for power without saying if they are micro steam engines or valve combustion engines.  If they are combustion engines a lower temperature differential increases efficiency hence the use of sulfur in some diesel fuels.

IRL coal power plants are universally of the steam engine type. Some more advanced coal plants have a gassification cycle that turns the coal into carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas and then burns those in a gas turbine (and then also uses the waste heat from gas turbine to power a steam turbine).

ONI coal power plant is either magic or a simplified steam engine.

[ImpalerWrG]

ALL heat engines work on temperature differentials, it's 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Nearly ALL uses of sulfur are in the form of sulfuric acid, which has uses in a huge number of chemical reactions.

I've already described a process that produces Sulfuric acid using water and hydrogen sulfide gas, this would skip the need for cooling the gas.

Solid sulfur needs to exist on the map, ideally in the caustic biome as a replacement for algae blobs which don't make sense there.  The solid sulfur can be turned into Sulfuric acid by simply dropping it into water, the sulfur will dissolve and convert water to acid which will be heavier then water and sinks.

Speaking of the Coal power plant, it should now produce sulfur waste as well as CO2, it could be a SO2 gas which would be heavier then even CO2, on contact with water it would also form acid.  This would make management Coal generators a bit more complex.  Note that the 'Carbon skimmer' should also pick up sulfur gasses (cause it's based on an Amine 'scrubber' which actually dose this) so their is a means of collecting it.  And the SO2 will not block the absorption of CO2.

[Coolthulhu]

19 minutes ago, ImpalerWrG said:

Speaking of the Coal power plant, it should now produce sulfur waste as well as CO2, it could be a SO2 gas which would be heavier then even CO2, on contact with water it would also form acid.  This would make management Coal generators a bit more complex.  Note that the 'Carbon skimmer' should also pick up sulfur gasses (cause it's based on an Amine 'scrubber' which actually dose this) so their is a means of collecting it.  And the SO2 will not block the absorption of CO2.

Sounds like a nerf to buildings that don't need a nerf and also painful anti-new-player mechanic (acid drops into clean water tank, gets into pump, damages random buildings that want clean water). Realism isn't worth it in this case.

[D.L.S.]

7 hours ago, ImpalerWrG said:

sulfuric acid, which has uses in a huge number of chemical reactions.

We dont have actual chemistry in game, so again will be used in some black-box-device with small profit. We have chlorine gas in game but dont have HCl, chlorine in game dont corrode and dissolve metals while it should, it seems that devs dont wanna mess with chemistry in game.

As for coal generators, coal burn dry(no water produced during burning, mostly co2) so amount of acid would be very small, can be ignored.

[trukogre]

On 9/4/2018 at 5:01 AM, D.L.S. said:

 

As for coal generators, coal burn dry(no water produced during burning, mostly co2) so amount of acid would be very small, can be ignored.

Do you have a source for that claim?  According to Zevenhoven and Kilpinen's monograph "Control of pollutants in flue gases and fuel gases", typical water vapor content of coal flue gas is around 6%.  How wet is 6% water vapor by weight?  IIRC, 100% humidity at room temperature/pressure is under 2% water vapor content, so we're looking at something like 350% relative humidity once the exhaust has cooled down to room temperature.  That doesn't seem all that dry to me.  (remember, around 75% of that flue gas is uncombusted nitrogen, so 6% water vapor means that around 25% of the combustion product is water vapor).

25% and "no water produced", seems to be some contradiction here.

[D.L.S.]

3 hours ago, trukogre said:

Do you have a source for that claim?

Comparing to hydrocarbon fuels, combustion of coal itself not produce water, water could be in coal itself and vaporized during combustion(i didnt thought about this, yes) or in intake air, but byproduct of burning pure carbon would be co2 - thats what i was talking about.

Lets try to calculate: 1kg of coal require to clean burn ~2.7kg of oxygen, o2 is ~23% by weight in air so its ~11.7kg of air, and it will exhaust ~12.7kg of nitrogen/co2 mix, so the source claims that additional 6% of this is water, it is ~750g, so for 1kg of coal we should have in intake air and in coal in total 750g of water, idk sounds too much. Ok lets assume air humidity on intake was 100%, its ~300g of water in 11.7kg of air(actually in would be 12kg of air already, counting water in it), so rest water was came from coal itself, almost half by mass... suspicious, but who knows.

[trukogre]

According to wikipedia standard grade anthracite, the kind you would see in a coal power plant, is defined by at minimum 73% carbon content and at maximum 14% moisture content.  Wikipedia gives a typical molecular breakdown for UHG anthracite as C₂₄₀H₉₀O₄NS, which by weight represents 94% carbon coal.  Obviously, as the hydrogens combine with much heavier oxygen in combustion, a very small hydrogen content by weight becomes a quite large moisture content added to the initial moisture content after combustion.  As you can see, coal *is* a hydrocarbon fuel, if you want a purer carbon fuel, for blast furnaces or such (i.e. making cast iron or steel), you take UHG anthracite and then make coke out of it, which is similar to making charcoal out of wood, but starting with anthracite instead of wood.  There is also a type of coke which is a residue of refining crude oil.   It looks like about half the moisture content in the flue gas could come from moisture in the coal or maybe somewhat less, and the rest from the hydrogen in the coal combusting, the humidity of the intake air appears relatively negligible.

[D.L.S.]

Roughly 2.5 to 1 carbon to hydrogen atomic ratio nowhere near to real hydrocarbons like methane where such ratio 1 to 4. But at least now i see where water came from.

[trukogre]

8 hours ago, D.L.S. said:

Roughly 2.5 to 1 carbon to hydrogen atomic ratio nowhere near to real hydrocarbons like methane where such ratio 1 to 4. But at least now i see where water came from.

Um, no, coal, natural gas, and crude oil, among others, are all 'real' hydrocarbons.  UHG anthracite has a 2.5 to 1 c/h ratio, methane has a 1 to 4, yes, and crude oil and gasoline are found somewhere near the middle of those ratios.  Gasoline should be around 1 to 2.2.  The coal actually burned in US power plants is probably closer to 1.5 to 1. Some are gases, some are liquids, some are solids.  Reality is not proportional to hydrogen content, or solidity, or whatever other property you've decided to pay attention to today.

On 9/1/2018 at 11:01 PM, Kabrute said:

 irl sulfur is used to lower the combustion temperature of other compounds, like gunpowder, so it kind of makes sense to use sulfur to boost coal genes power output, as such I am recommending that power stations recipe be updated to sulfur

IRL sulfur is removed from coal before sending it to coal power plants, so it actually quite emphatically doesn't make sense to use sulfur to boost coal generator power output.  Notice below that sulfur is the only contaminant mentioned specifically as a candidate for removal.

source: "

Before coal is shipped long distances, it undergoes a process of preparation to lower shipping costs and prepare it for use in power plants. Preparation generally includes crushing the coal and removing heavy, extraneous non-coal materials.

If coal is high in sulfur or other impurities, it is washed with a water or chemical bath, removing up to 40 percent of inorganic sulfur in the coal. "

 

from https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/all-about-coal/how-coal-works#.W5LdIehKiUk