THE SOUR GAS-TARD - Crude Oil to Natural Gas

[Lifegrow]

Hey folks,

Just thought I'd share a build i'd been tinkering with to turn crude oil to natural gas using no external heat sources (i.e. it's all powered by aquatuners).

tl,dr : it takes crude oil to natural gas and gives a massive amount of natural gas for power generation. Video below for detailed explanation and save file.

The upper part is the main build, the bottom part is the 4 NGG's needed to power the build (boosted by the steam turbine).

In short, crude oil enters the build and is preheated to around 260 Degrees C. This oil is boiled by the first aquatuner into petroleum, which can then be cooked to sour gas by the second aquatuner. The sour gas passes a steam turbine and sulfur-filled conveyor loop before hitting the main cooling radiator. Liquid methane is collected in the bottom chamber where it is boiled back into natural gas before being pumped to an over pressurised tank. Any liquid methane that boils away is collected by the top leftmost pumps and pumped to the same storage tank. Just an FYI, this outputs between 2 - 2.8kg/s so you realistically need a minimum of 6 pumps to fully clear the build - however, due to the nature in which it boils this does vary from cycle to cycle. 

It's a big boy build, and can 100% be way smaller, however it was just to show the concept of the 4 step process of turning Oil -> petroleum -> sour gas - > methane -> natural gas. The upper part is the main build, the bottom part is the 4 NGG's needed to power the build (boosted by the steam turbine).

 

(apologies if the video is low quality - Youtube is taking their sweet time processing vids today...)

This is something I hadn't really bothered with due to the ease of petroleum gens, however wanted to give it a try as it seemed fun  I would very much recommend any of you to have a go at it yourselves if you havn't yet! 

Much love - Life.x

[0xFADE]

Hmm didn’t someone have a 10kg one?  Though I can’t vouch for any efficiency.

Using sulfur as a heat transfer medium is nice. 

[Neotuck]

9 minutes ago, 0xFADE said:

Hmm didn’t someone have a 10kg one?  Though I can’t vouch for any efficiency.

I did a 2kg one a while back but it used the under 1000g in a pipe exploit so I know it isn't too popular

I can't imagine needing more that 2kg/s.  That's enough to run 25 generators, any more and you'll have to make a separate heavy watt circuit or you'll overload them.

[0xFADE]

It was probably around 2kg as well since I do remember 2 oil wells being mentioned. 

[Neotuck]

2 minutes ago, 0xFADE said:

It was probably around 2kg as well since I do remember 2 oil wells being mentioned. 

Oil wells emit 3333.3g/s so I doubt it

[Saturnus]

15 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

I did a 2kg one a while back but it used the under 1000g in a pipe exploit so I know it isn't too popular

I can't imagine needing more that 2kg/s.  That's enough to run 25 generators, any more and you'll have to make a separate heavy watt circuit or you'll overload them.

Yours was also pre-space age materials if I recall correctly. It's trivial to do now with supercoolant. The challenge now lies in doing it most energy efficiently. Although, honestly, even energy efficiency isn't that relevant anymore since power is basically infinite in the game right now once you have access to space age materials (and arguably way before that).

[crypticorb]

I greatly appreciate your efforts, but this was obviously designed and built in debug. Have you constructed this in your survival base, and is it feasible to do so?

Approximately how much supercoolant and thermium does this require to build?

Would it be feasible to build it without space materials, and if so, would it be difficult to upgrade to space materials after they are acquired?

[mathmanican]

35 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

It's a big boy build,

My favorite part is the name "THE SOUR GAS-TARD".  Definitely fits the (insert derpy-name) comment last week.  Love it.  Thanks for sharing. 

3 minutes ago, crypticorb said:

I greatly appreciate your efforts, but this was obviously designed and built in debug. Have you constructed this in your survival base, and is it feasible to do so?

Of course it's doable out of debug. The fun part is doing so. You can't take the space age materials off the aquatuner (you need the high temp resistance), but the other stuff can be replaced (just makes the build bigger, and more power hungry).  Super coolant makes it nice and compact, but all the needed temps can be reached without it. 

[0xFADE]

12 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

Oil wells emit 3333.3g/s so I doubt it

So then at least 6kg. I was only remembering the input amount of the oil well.  And if it could be 6 it may as well have been 10 so maybe my memory is a little better than I thought. 

[Neotuck]

17 minutes ago, 0xFADE said:

So then at least 6kg. I was only remembering the input amount of the oil well.  And if it could be 6 it may as well have been 10 so maybe my memory is a little better than I thought. 

Don't forget you get lots of Natural Gas from the oil wells too.  I think they also emit steam so you'll have to deal with filtering

[0xFADE]

24 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

Don't forget you get lots of Natural Gas from the oil wells too.  I think they also emit steam so you'll have to deal with filtering

I did have some rogue steam in with my natural gas from an oil well. I thought it was from something else but that makes more sense.  I never looked at how much steam was in with it so it was likely increasing. 

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, 0xFADE said:

I did have some rogue steam in with my natural gas from an oil well. I thought it was from something else but that makes more sense.  I never looked at how much steam was in with it so it was likely increasing. 

Guess you have a choice of filtering steam from NG, or water from oil

[Saturnus]

32 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

Don't forget you get lots of Natural Gas from the oil wells too.  I think they also emit steam so you'll have to deal with filtering

Only if something happens to your pipes

[0xFADE]

I didn’t have any broken pipes or any water in the area that would have turned to steam. 

[Neotuck]

5 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

Only if something happens to your pipes

No it happens when dupes relieve pressure on the oil well.  I don't know the ratio but a small amount of steam comes out with the NG

[Iriswaters]

Nifty.  I've been poking at something somewhat similar.  Though I was in the process of getting there step by step.  Starting from "can I magma boil and then cool oil-> methane without using space tech?".  That glitchy one that I shared and you commented on was my sandbox attempt.  I now have a much messier(but not magically naptha producing) version working.  Took so much steel.  Why is steel so hard to come by??  :'(

Anyway, what you've got was my long term plan.  But of course it requires thermium and supercoolant. Since I'm playing max difficulty(not because I'm especially good, just enjoy a challenge) that is going to take a while.

The fun thing about boiling your own gas is that oil wells used to make gas end up a net positive water production, I think.  If you somehow use it all that is(2 kg/s is a lot of power).  1kg water = 3.33kg oil.  Oil to petroleum via boiling is 1-1 I think? Idk about petrol to sour gas.   Sour gas to methane isn't, I'm pretty sure the sulfur is a mass loss, but much less than half. And then burning gas is 67.5/90.  Loss of less than 1/3.

All in all, I am fairly convinced that it's a net positive.  Though a small one.

4 hours ago, crypticorb said:

Would it be feasible to build it without space materials, and if so, would it be difficult to upgrade to space materials after they are acquired?

Petrol boils at 539°C.  Steel can survive 275°C.  Without thermium, the only real manner that cooking petrol is possible is by using magma.  Which is a limited resource.  In my survival I am currently effectively mining out the lava tubes on my map for sour gas production.   Needless to say, unlike a closed loop of temperature like Lifegrow uses, using magma creates a lot of waste heat you have to deal with.  Steam engine it the way to go.

Doing this can net you a couple hundred tons of methane.  That's enough to last you quite a while, though processing it all is far less efficient than it'd be with thermium and coolant.  It should get you through to the space age though. So long as you don't run out of Pacus.  Lol

[Lifegrow]

Thanks for the responses guys - just wrapped up a stream and came back to a wall of feedback from you guys so most of the points have already been well answered tbh

Just to be clear, this was my first attempt at building this, and the main focus was to do it without external heating and ideally as efficiently as possible - not every base has a volcano, not everyone is comfortable working with magma, and not everyone caps off space for solar power - so these were my considerations.

In short, it could definitely be refined and made smaller - lots of people have advised me to just use 1 aquatuner to do the whole process, however I feel that would be less efficient in terms of throughput/cooling power. I have also considered taller chambers and using less radiant piping for extremely localised cooling - however these builds also seem to suffer from throughput hits. In all honestly, I feel 4 un-tinkered NGG's and the steam turbine powering the entire build is a miracle in itself, and the surplus natural gas would yield a lot of additional CO2 (future oil) and lots of polluted water to boot. It's genuinely one of the most enjoyable messy derp builds I've done in a while, and hopefully one that people don't overlook trying at least once

5 hours ago, crypticorb said:

I greatly appreciate your efforts, but this was obviously designed and built in debug. Have you constructed this in your survival base, and is it feasible to do so?

Approximately how much supercoolant and thermium does this require to build?

Would it be feasible to build it without space materials, and if so, would it be difficult to upgrade to space materials after they are acquired?

I wouldn't dream of building this version in a survival game to be honest - this is a mish-mash of tinkering and relocating to get things to work. Were I to try and refine it further i'd change an awful lot of things truth be told. I have got a v1.1 i've been tinkering with, but it's not quite ready yet  

However, that being said, could it be built in survival? Of course - just needs a lot of forethought on building your way out.

In terms of thermium - the only essentials are the aquatuners - so 2400kg. The methane making radiator is made of thermium but could be substituted for gold if you wanted. Me personally, I don't find thermium to be a rarity in the late game (and that 400 thermal conductivity.... nom), and often build everything out of it. Insulate - probably requires about 600kg, so not cheap - but nothing made of insulate is. Super coolant - around 600kg would give you filled radiators plus a few hundred kg's per reservoir for buffer averaging.

Let's face it though guys, if you're going to attempt something like this, you'd probably have launched your first few steam rockets at least. Paired with a booster - you're able to farm the 20km asteroids before you've even made your first drop of petrol.

5 hours ago, mathmanican said:

My favorite part is the name "THE SOUR GAS-TARD".  Definitely fits the (insert derpy-name) comment last week.  Love it.  Thanks for sharing. 

Glad that wasn't wasted  

 

[0xFADE]

I havn't pulled anything from it yet so:

568kg natural gas

72.3kg steam

Roughly 8 grams of steam per kg of natural gas?

 

Since there isn't much room can't really say what has been deleted.

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, 0xFADE said:

Roughly 8 grams of steam per kg of natural gas?

My guess was 99% NG and 1% steam

8g per 1kg is pretty close to that

[0xFADE]

Very likely.

[Iriswaters]

7 hours ago, Lifegrow said:

Let's face it though guys, if you're going to attempt something like this, you'd probably have launched your first few steam rockets at least. Paired with a booster - you're able to farm the 20km asteroids before you've even made your first drop of petrol.

 

Maybe.   But even doing a single simple rocket requires high tier jobs and dealing with space, bunker tiles, regolith, etc.   I think for many players, space is a daunting, end game thing whereas maximizing power in your own little environment feels much more immediate.

For instance, I have yet to launch a single rocket, but have made this

[Lifegrow]

4 minutes ago, Iriswaters said:

Maybe.   But even doing a single simple rocket requires high tier jobs and dealing with space, bunker tiles, regolith, etc.   I think for many players, space is a daunting, end game thing whereas maximizing power in your own little environment feels much more immediate.
 

This isn't the sort of build you'd make just so you can power a basic base though was my point - this thing generates between 14,000 and 15,000kj a cycle - that's more than most players (used loosely) will generate in even their biggest of bases.

The main perk of the build is this : (I've got some example figures to hand after explaining on a yt comment)

To use an easy amount of petroleum - 2400kg isn't far off the average for this build. 2400kg of Petroleum through petroleum generators will get you less polluted water,  (~300kg per cycle less), more CO2 (200kg more) but will generate 2400kj as opposed to the natural gas gens equivocal 14,208kj.

Now you could argue that the CO2 difference is worth something, however i'm not even going to do the maths - the difference in potential power generation is pretty clear.

14208 kj in NGG's
2400 kj in Petroleum Gens

I know which i'm more interested in...

Also - I've since started on Mk1.1 - refined it hugely and seemingly a more energy efficient (albeit larger looking) and way simpler version that's currently churning out at a rate of 4kg/s - however letting it run for 100 cycles or so to test stability/efficiency before I get too carried away. To be clear here, I don't actually want such a large throughput, it reaches a point when the power needed to move the gas starts eating into the efficiency - i'm more curious as to the limitations/hurdles i'll encounter along the way  

This one for example requires 7 NGG's to run, but provides enough surplus natural gas for an additional 37 NGG's to be running constantly.

That's in excess of 17,760 kj per cycle ((not factoring in the steam turbine which seems to generate varying amounts between 350-400kj per cycle)).

Theres no cooldown time, just the time it takes for the aquatuners to boil the first batch of oil, which; as the room doesn't cool below ~300 at the hot plate doesn't take long at all, maybe 1/4 of a cycle. 

tl;dr - my first iterations of these builds are big and cumbersome - mostly so I can observe whats happening), but eventually someone will come along with a super compact version - give it a dumb single syllable name, and boom - the hype train begins  

 

Spoiler

 

[Iriswaters]

Oh, I know the natural gas is way better.   Both in terms of power generation and water.   That's why I have a sour gas condenser myself.   Or, something vaguely akin to one, haha.   It's a bit of a mess tbh.   Pipes exploding all over the place from phase changes, heat leaking out of the magma pool and cooking everything, and I have yet to figure out how to properly thermo-gate pipes so that they never allow the wrong node of gas/liquid to pass.   Which means that thermo-gated regulators sometimes get a packet of material that is cold enough that getting chilled further causes pipe damage.  

The biggest issue I had was steam.  My next version(this is #2, #1 was in sandbox) needs to do a better job of dealing with steam in advance.   But the packet temperature issue is an ongoing struggle...

That second version is interesting.   Using gravity to pre-cool the incoming sour gas from the methane precipitate, instead of passing the sour gas through radiant pipes in a room fed liquid methane.   The lack of any pumps, liquid or gas, apart from initial input and end removal is nifty.   Very clean build.

[Lifegrow]

Video has finally been updated to 720p HD at least folks - sorry for the abysmal video quality, ended up having to tweet youtube and shortly after it was fixed. 

[Lifegrow]

On 15/11/2018 at 7:31 PM, crypticorb said:

I greatly appreciate your efforts, but this was obviously designed and built in debug. Have you constructed this in your survival base, and is it feasible to do so?

Approximately how much supercoolant and thermium does this require to build?

Would it be feasible to build it without space materials, and if so, would it be difficult to upgrade to space materials after they are acquired?

I made a smaller little fella that you might be interested in btw bud 

Way easier to build in a survival game - with just a couple of ladders and a bit of backwards building.