(10 kg/sec) Super sour gas boiler prototype

[Ainsley4ever]

First of all, I would like to point out that part of this boiler is inspired by @AzeTheGreat's boiler. I put the link to his topic here:

 

As you all know, the Devs have further nerfed (or made more realistic in my opinion) the production of natural gas through oil boiling. As a result, it has become much more difficult to create a functional natural gas boiler than before.

Difficult, but not impossible.

So I present you my prototype boiler : the... uh... Ultra Super Sour gas Refinement unit (just kidding, I'm going to try and find a real name). It's extremely efficient in terms of magma and energy consumption, and is capable of processing between 0 and 10 kg/sec of crude oil, producing up to 6.7 kg/sec of natural gas (assuming it receives 10 kg/sec of oil).

Here's the beast :

Spoiler

 

How it works:

First of all, the infrastructure consists of 7 distinct subsystems:

Spoiler

-The boiler (in red): It will ensure the transfer of heat between the oil and the magma, thus allowing it to evaporate.

-The preheating chamber (in orange): It's more than useful because it's thanks to it that we achieve such efficiency in terms of magma consumption. Indeed, liquid magma (initially at 1727°C) can heat oil until it passes to the solid state (at 1410°C). The resulting rock is still extremely hot, and we would lose a lot of energy if we got rid of it like that. So that's the role of this chamber, it preheats the oil by bringing it into contact with the scorching igneous rock from the cooled magma, thus making maximum use of its energy.

-The igneous rock management system (in pink): It consists of two units: An input, which will recover the hot igneous rock and pass it through the preheating chamber, and an output, which will recover the cooled rock and remove it from the system. Auto sweepers and conveyor loaders are kept in a vacuum, and are cooled by polluted water. The system is built in such a way that no heat transfer is possible between the igneous rock and its environment. This way, no potential energy is lost.

-The temperature tuning area (in yellow): Here, a steam turbine is used to cool the sour gas if it exceeds 300°C when entering the cooling zone.

-The cooling zone (in dark blue): Basically another heat exchanger. It will allow the cooling of the sour gas with input oil, the sulfur from the condensation of methane and the methane itself, which passes through a pipe next to the sour gas to cool it.  Thanks to this system a minimum of energy is lost, and the sulphur gas is pre-cooled from 300°C to -70°C.

-The methane condenser (in light blue): It will take care of condensing the sour gas, thanks to 4 aquatuners that will cool 4 loops of super coolant. Liquid methane and sulfur fall into a tank, and are transported by a pump and a sweeper to the cooling zone. The aquatuners are cooled by polluted water.

-The pumping area (in green): Natural gas rising from the methane condenser exits the system after cooling the sour gas in the cooling zone.

 

Here are the other overlays :

Spoiler

Electric cables :

 

Temperature :

 

Liquids :

 

Ventilation :

 

Automation :

 

Conveyors :

 

Here's some more information about the boiler :

-The boiling zone alternates between two modes: First, it will use liquid magma until it solidifies, then it will block the magma input and use the heat contained in the igneous rock obtained. When the rock becomes too cold, it's replaced with warmer rock by the system, and when there is no hot rock available anymore, the system reactivates the magma supply and restarts its cycle. The magmatic rock passes through several loops as it rises into the preheating chamber, thus maximizing the use of the heat it contains. When it leaves the system, the temperature of the magmatic rock is 350°C, compared to 1727°C initially.

-Four door pumps help the sour gas flow from one chamber to another, and run the gas turbine.

-The entire infrastructure consumes around 3400 kJ per cycle, or ~6 kW/sec when converting 10 kg/sec of crude oil. This may seem like a lot (and it is), but if you manage to get it up and running it will produce enough natural gas to power 75 natural gas generators, which will produce 60 kW of power. Which is a lot of power.

-Most of the metal tiles are built out of thermite (the new superconductor), and all of the tempshift plates are made out of diamond. In reality, only the boiler and the methane condenser need this amount of thermal conductivity to function properly.

-The infrastructure requires an input of magma, crude oil at 80°C and cold polluted water at -20°C (the amounts needed depend on the quantity of natural gas you want to produce), and will output natural gas at 50/70°C, igneous rock at ~350°C, polluted water at 70°C and sulfur at -80°C. I could make some loops like with the igneous rock to cool the sour gas a bit more with the sulfur, but I didn't feel like it was necessary (And I was a bit lazy too).

 

Although it may seem quite OP, this system has some big disadvantages:

-The main one is that it requires a continuous supply of cold polluted water (or any other liquid, but water is better) to cool the aquatuners and the sweepers. And it consumes a lot of it. To treat 10 kg/sec of oil, it takes about 5 kg/sec of polluted water at -20°C to prevent the methane condenser from overheating. And frankly, I don't think you can have such a large, stable and infinite source of cold polluted water in a survival game.

-Also, the system's natural gas output flow is not totally consistent. It may be (it's not confirmed) that the system is experiencing sour gas deletion in the preheating chamber, probably due to the transition from crude oil to petroleum. Since they overlap when this change occurs, it makes the two liquids move like crazy and can potentially delete some gas. The door pumps may also be deleting sour gas, but I highly doubt it.

 

Remember that it's still a prototype (even if it's mostly finished), and that two things are missing: an efficient way to use the cooling power of the sufur (which is difficult because of it's low thermal conductivity), and an efficient way to quickly shut down and restart the entire infrastructure if natural gas production exceeds demand.

 

I will post a save file here : Magma 10kg.sav

 

I also have a message for the developers, if they ever see it :

I understand that natural gas production was too cheaty before, and I understand that you nerfed it. But now, stop doing it. Even if you can still get huge amounts of natural gas with a boiler, it has become difficult enough that it's no longer considered cheating. I'm talking mainly about the cost of the infrastructure and the materials needed to maintain it, which is gigantic. And most of all, it would be necessary to supply my boiler with more than 5 kW continuously for several cycles just to kickstart it... It's almost impossible in a normal game. Natural gas is sufficiently nerfed as it is, there's no longer any need to nerf it further...

 

 

Please post a comment if you have an idea on how to improve this design, or just to give your opinion.

 

[Neotuck]

Very impressive build

not sure I would build this in survival though as 6.7kg/s natural gas seems like overkill.

It would power 74 generators for almost 60kW without automation from smart batteries

However if the "pipes don't break if packets are less than 1kg" bug ever gets fixed then I may have to consider making a scaled down version of this

[Ainsley4ever]

2 hours ago, Neotuck said:

6.7kg/s natural gas seems like overkill

That's the whole point

But you know, it's meant to convert between 0 and 10 kg/sec of oil, so you can set the liquid valve (it's located under the steam turbine) to a smaller number (1kg/sec for example). Personally I would make it regulate it's production based on the demand, but I don't think it's possible. 

2 hours ago, Neotuck said:

I may have to consider making a scaled down version of this

If this can help you, you only need two aquatuners (only one should barely work, but two is safer and is just as efficient) to condense the sour gas if you plan on converting less than 5kg/sec of oil, assuming you use super coolant and the sour gas is precooled at -70°C. 

[Carnis]

1) its really cool

2) do you really need -20C pW, cant you use any temp pW and sieve it?

3) had to read long, bcs I thought this build impossible, but "supercoolant" explanation it.

4) its omitting Aze's thermo insulated boiling room, so have some doubts If IT would actually run constant 10kg/s with a volcano source... BUT its really cool nonetheless.

5) you can get More cooling from sulfur by looping it & automating The sweeper that empties the loop to really sluggish.

*

The devs closed the last oil-water loophole with oxidized rocket fuels, no More dups breathing oil in a normal game.

This also conveniently kills the accept all challenge build.

[0xFADE]

Very nice.

[Ainsley4ever]

13 hours ago, Carnis said:

do you really need -20C pW, cant you use any temp pW and sieve it?

Technically, it should work as long as you keep the water from boiling and breaking the pipes. And you gave me an idea : If I use the polluted water from the generators, sieve it, then send it to the boiler, then take the heated water and run it in a carbon skimmer alimented by the carbon dioxide produced by the generators, to use it it as coolant the generators, it should be possible to create a closed water loop... I need to test this. 

13 hours ago, Carnis said:

its omitting Aze's thermo insulated boiling room

I didn't build it because I didn't think it was necessary in my case. From what I saw and understood, in Aze's build the environnement next to the boiler can get really hot (more than 600°C), because of the igneous rock on the conveyor belt, which is at 1400°C. In my build however, the first loop of 1400°C rock isn't in direct contact with the sour gas and the oil, and will only transfer its heat when the door of the boiler closes. Because of that, the temperature of the sour gas never gets hotter than the temperature of the boiling petroleum (538°C), plus the fact that newly injected oil drags heat with it as it flows down to the boiler, which means the temperature of the sour gas exiting the preheat chamber never gets higher than 350/400°C, versus 400/500°C for Aze. I can't access my computer for the moment, so these numbers are probably not exact. 

But your remark makes me doubt. I will make some tests and calculations and come with an answer as soon as possible.

[Carnis]

Well, its easy to take out the numbers. (Set valve to 10kg, measure igneous consumption over 5 cycles), If numbers are below 3000kg you are ok.

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I built aze's boiler @10kg/s.

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The last chamber insulated 505C petroleum from 540C petroleum, we did not have overheat issues, just over igneous consumption issues & sometimes issues with backed out oil getting too cold, never too hot.

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Regardless, The build would just need an extra module, it would work just as well.

[Ainsley4ever]

2 hours ago, Carnis said:

If numbers are below 3000kg you are ok.

I still don't have access to my computer but I based myself on how much the igneous rock and sulfur containers were filled in my screenshots (when I get home I will redo my calculations with the real numbers) . With this information I deduced that my design consumes 1 kg of magma to convert around 12 kg of oil at 80°C (the temperature of the input oil is quite important). This means that with an input of 10 kg/sec of 80°C oil, my boiler consumed around 2500 kg of magma over the course of 5 cycles.

Can you tell me your ratios (and the temperature of your input oil) , so we can compare ? 

2 hours ago, Carnis said:

I built aze's boiler @10kg/s

Could you please send me your save ? On Aze's topic you posted multiple versions and I don't know which one to choose. Also, you know, the automation... 

[Zarquan]

22 hours ago, Neotuck said:

not sure I would build this in survival though as 6.7kg/s natural gas seems like overkill.

But think of the water.  Water is great!  I love drinking water!  6.7 kg/s natural gas is 5025 g/s water!  Of course, that is less if you use the water on oil wells, but it is free!  If you use the geometric series 6.7/8 * Σ 1/8 = 6.7/7 = 0.957 kg/s crude oil from the CO2.  That means we only need 9.043 kg/s crude oil, meaning we only need to use 2.713 kg/s of the water rather than 3 kg/s.  This is ignoring the natural gas that comes from the oil wells.  So this results in a net profit of 2312 g/s water, which is certainly not insignificant.

Plus, natural gas generators are great sources of cooling.  I certainly would build a system like this in my game.

Also, 6.7 kg/s natural gas supports 50 slicksters.  Meaning more eggs or meat! 

[Carnis]

3 hours ago, Ainsley4ever said:

Can you tell me your ratios (and the temperature of your input oil) , so we can compare ? 

Could you please send me your save ? On Aze's topic you posted multiple versions and I don't know which one to choose. Also, you know, the automation... 

Honestly I dot not remember exact ratios, but I did 90% of the work in getting it to run solidly, I deleted the door and connected with direct tungsten tiles & instead regulated the temperature with door insulators.

The oil I was using was 350K or 76.9 degrees and flowrate was 10kg/s.

Here's the save, it still seems to work, as of rocketry.

 

working 10kg model.sav

[Neotuck]

20 minutes ago, Zarquan said:

But think of the water.  Water is great!  I love drinking water!  6.7 kg/s natural gas is 5025 g/s water!  Of course, that is less if you use the water on oil wells, but it is free!

Plus, natural gas generators are great sources of cooling.  I certainly would build a system like this in my game.

Water is always good, that's why I always search out map seeds with good slush geysers

[Ainsley4ever]

3 hours ago, Carnis said:

Here's the save

Thanks for posting it.

 

So I finally got home, did the tests with both boilers and calculated everything. Here are my results :

Carnis' boiler :

I let it run over the course of 15 cycles with an input rate of 10 kg/s of oil at 80°C, and got 7.2 tons of igneous rock at 310°C.

This means that over the course of 15 cycles, or 15*600=9000 seconds, this boiler used 7.5 t of magma, or an average of 7200/9000=0.8 kg of magma per second.

The system was converting 10 kg/s of crude oil at 80°C, so it means that 0.8 kg of magma was used to process 10 kg of crude oil, or that 1kg of magma was capable of converting 10/0.8=12.5 kg of oil.

 

My boiler :

Just like the other one, it was processing 10 kg/s of crude oil at 80°C. I ended up with 7.3 tons of igneous rock at 330°C and 27.2 tons of sulfur.

This means that 7.3 t of magma managed to create 27.2 t of sulfur, or that 1 kg of magma created 27200/7300~3.73 kg of sulfur.

But because 1 kg of oil turns into 670 g of methane and 330 g of sulfur, I deduced that in addition to the 3.73 kg of sulfur, 3.73*670/330~7.57 kg of methane. Which means that 1 kg of magma converted 3.73+7.57=11.3 kg of petroleum. Or that my system uses 10/11.3=0.89 kg of magma to convert 10 kg of oil.

 

So yeah, you were right @Carnis. Using an insulated boiling room seems to be better than my current setup, as it allows to process an additional 1.2 kg of oil using 1 kg of magma, compared to mine.

...Ok I admit, my boiler isn't the most efficient one . will try to incorporate your version (and Aze's, let's not forget him) in a future version. Thanks !

[AzeTheGreat]

6 hours ago, Ainsley4ever said:

Ok I admit, my boiler isn't the most efficient one . will try to incorporate your version (and Aze's, let's not forget him) in a future version. Thanks !

I just want to throw out there that it's important to keep in mind how we're measuring efficiency.  Yes, you may be able to reduce the magma consumption even farther, but the only reason I initially even bothered to do so was because my magma consumption was unrealistically high.

6 hours ago, Ainsley4ever said:

Or that my system uses 10/11.3=0.89 kg of magma to convert 10 kg of oil.

0.89 kg/s is still quite low, and if it's low enough to be supplied by whatever volcano you're using then there's not much point in trying to push it even lower - that will get you less igneous rock and has the cost of requiring additional infrastructure.  Unless of course you're trying to run multiple machines off of one volcano.

Obviously it is a fun design exercise though - I just wanted to point out that good enough can be enough.

 

 

[Carnis]

Yea, you just need to stay under 1kg/s. Higher efficiency after that only means you are underutilising your igneous.

Is it efficient enough to run on 350K oil?

[Ainsley4ever]

On 10/9/2018 at 6:16 AM, Carnis said:

Is it efficient enough to run on 350K oil?

I guess it's possible to input higher temperature oil if we tweak the piping system a little bit, and it would definietly be more efficient (because the magma won't need to use as much of its heat to boil hotter oil) . I used 80°C oil simply because it's its temperature when coming out of an oil well.

Edit : An oil well produces crude oil at 90°C, not 80.

[Zarquan]

On 10/7/2018 at 11:43 AM, Ainsley4ever said:

-The main one is that it requires a continuous supply of cold polluted water (or any other liquid, but water is better) to cool the aquatuners and the sweepers. And it consumes a lot of it. To treat 10 kg/sec of oil, it takes about 5 kg/sec of polluted water at -20°C to prevent the methane condenser from overheating. And frankly, I don't think you can have such a large, stable and infinite source of cold polluted water in a survival game

Coincidentally your system produces 6.7 kg/s natural gas, as you know.  This results in 5.025 kg/s polluted water from natural gas generators.  Since the temperatures of the polluted water is set to the temperature of the natural gas generator, if you cool the natural gas generator to around -20 C, you will get your 5 kg/s polluted water at -20 C.  You can cool it more if you want and use polluted ice for extra cooling, but that is harder.  That way, you don't need to sieve it or waste CO2 on carbon skimming.

[Carnis]

2 hours ago, Ainsley4ever said:

I guess it's possible to input higher temperature oil if we tweak the piping system a little bit, and it would definietly be more efficient (because the magma won't need to use as much of its heat to boil hotter oil) . I used 80°C oil simply because it's its temperature when coming out of an oil well.

350K is 76.9C =].

*

Also, If you do not overboil your generators it should be easy to cool this with exhaust pW, from NGGs.

*

Very cool build, would be enough water/oxygen for 50 duplicants.

The main beef in this build is the aquatuners running with supercoolant, which means you can transfer heat into metal tiles & from There to sulfur & polluted water to be sieved.

Does IT really need 4 tuners? I was expecting to need around 22-24 hydrogen thermoregs. Much less than 4 aqtuner.

*

Its interesting that IT runs without the insulated final heating room, maybe conveyors on the last room were slowing our boil.

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Im on rocketry, so cant livetest your build.

[Neotuck]

Have you seen my build @Ainsley4ever? have any comments for it or how we could combine it with yours to make a more effective design?

It's not as complex as yours but it's easy to build in survival and can produce 2kg/s NG

 

[Neotuck]

NOTE: my build was made before the latest preview branch was released so I was using window tiles and hydrogen gas for temp control which I know can be replaced with the new metal tiles and super coolant.

[Ainsley4ever]

9 hours ago, Carnis said:

350K is 76.9C =]

Oops ! Sorry about that, I was a little tired today... It works with 80°C oil, so 4 degrees less won't change much.

 

9 hours ago, Carnis said:

Does IT really need 4 tuners? I was expecting to need around 22-24 hydrogen thermoregs. Much less than 4 aqtuner.

In reality, aquatuners do not operate on a full-time basis. If they ran all the time, the 4 aquatuners would consume 1200*4*600=2880 kJ per cycle. In my build, they consume about 1300 kJ per cycle. They therefore work 1300/2880*100=45% of the time if 10 kg/s of oil is processed. I use 4 of them because the sour gas that reaches them has a pressure of 40 kg/tile....  I did tests in the past, and the gas comes too fast and in too large quantities for two aquatuners to support it. However, if you want to process 5 kg/s of oil or less, two aquatuners will do.

 

5 hours ago, Neotuck said:

Have you seen my build @Ainsley4ever? have any comments for it or how we could combine it with yours to make a more effective design?

It's not as complex as yours but it's easy to build in survival and can produce 2kg/s NG

You'll find this funny, but it was your build that gave me the idea to create this one :D.

In fact, some parts of my boiler are inspired by yours, for example the idea of letting liquid methane accumulate in a tank at the bottom.

I don't like to exploit bugs, so I wanted to make a system that didn't make use of them... and to my surprise (really, I was in total improvisation mode lol) it managed to get it to convert 10 kg/s of oil.

However, I don't really think we can combine them like you suggested (sorry...), as they work way too differently for that. But you should keep improving yours, since it's quite simple to build in survival, which is a huge bonus compared to mine. You could start by replacing all of your regulators with two aquatuners to save space and energy, for example.

[Neotuck]

1 hour ago, Ainsley4ever said:

I don't like to exploit bugs, so I wanted to make a system that didn't make use of them... 

I'm not sure if it's a bug or not.  Seems like having an exception to the pipe breaking rule would involve extra codes in the program which would have to be intentional.

But I'm not a computer programmer so don't quote me on that

[Zarquan]

2 hours ago, Neotuck said:

I'm not sure if it's a bug or not.  Seems like having an exception to the pipe breaking rule would involve extra codes in the program which would have to be intentional.

But I'm not a computer programmer so don't quote me on that

I bet it was a temporary fix to a problem.  If you pump steam, you would end up pumping tiny quantities of steam which would heat very easily and break even insulated pipes very quickly.

EDIT I meant cool instead of heat.

[Carnis]

@Ainsley4ever your comments said gas flow is inconsistent.

I highly doubt you have any real deletion, as my 10kg boiler experienced none.

Its a gas flow issue. A doorpump only costs 120watts while its active, making shorter & more pressurised modules would solve this. 

Also, gas seems to flow poorly through 1 tile wide corridors and corners.

*

On a sidenote, this kind of crazy energy builds might Be a thing. Bcs Klei is adding liquid hydrogen Fuel, endgame bases need a non hydro powerbase.

[Neotuck]

2 hours ago, Zarquan said:

If you pump steam, you would end up pumping tiny quantities of steam which would heat very easily and break even insulated pipes very quickly. 

so you are saying a gas (steam) would heat up and change state to break the pipes?  To what?  Steam only changes state when it cools down to water

[Zarquan]

8 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

so you are saying a gas (steam) would heat up and change state to break the pipes?  To what?  Steam only changes state when it cools down to water

I meant to say cool down.

What I am saying is if this wasn't in the game, then if you put a gold pump in an area with 120C steam to vacuum the area, then eventually the pump would only be pumping tiny packets.  These tiny packets cool down much faster than larger packets and could break even insulated pipes.  That would be quite annoying, so they made it so small packets can't change state in pipes.  And I think they will probably try to find a better solution. 

But this is just a guess as to why this is in the game.