SMALLER, EASIER, CHEAPER NATURAL GAS BUILD.

[Lifegrow]

Hey folks,

Just thought i'd share my latest tinkerings with Natural gas boilers since my previous post a couple of days ago :

Spoiler

 

From the feedback I decided to make a smaller, lower throughput, less costly set up. The focus being more on efficient use of energy, and overall stability (i.e. lots of fail-safes in place). I've nicknamed it the Boom Box - seemed only right.

The tl;dr :

It's a crude oil boiler that takes 1.2kg/s of Crude Oil, and turns it into 0.9kg/s of natural gas.

It costs ~550kj (on average) per cycle to run, which is just over 1 Natural Gas Gen (480kj) but gives enough natural gas to run 10 Natural Gas Gens. It's a small and schweet little babbie.

Just to give you a comparison - it takes roughly 720kg of petroleum a cycle to run at full speed. If you put that 720kg of petroleum through a petroleum gen, it would net you 720kj of power. Taking that same petroleum, boiling it into sour gas and then on to natural gas (factoring in the sulfur loss) would net you around 2880KJ of power..

Anyways, heres a video with the save file for you lazy boys/girls  Full description below. x

Anyways, hope this is helpful - enjoy.xox

 

(Disclaimer : This is a bit of a long winded description, so brace yourself Agnes, we're going deep...)

So, this is a 2 stage boiler again, crude oil -> petroleum in the top left chamber, regulated in the same way as my petroleum builds (spot of super coolant and a hydro sensor to avoid overboiling paired with some simple automation).

Below there is the second aquatuner that takes the petroleum -> sour gas, where its held behind a vacuum airlock. The next chamber is a heatsink with some radiant piping looping behind the steam turbine, and a bit of radiant piping where our crude oil in feed passes through for a little pre-warming :

The sour gas is normally around 200 degrees by this point, and is moved up a mechanized gas pump to the upper right chamber where it hits a super-coolant filled gold radiant pipe radiator to condense to liquid methane. This is then pumped to a gas tank for pumping wherever you want.

The turbine is mostly dormant and essentially acts as a giant radiator when not in use - but also boils the liquid methane into gassy natural goodness, which is helpful. 

The automation needs a little deeper explanation, so will slap it in a spoiler : 

Spoiler

Top left automation is predominantly for controlling the petroleum generator. The leftmost hydro sensor acts as a trigger for feeding more oil into the build, and also deactivates the aquatuner if no oil/petroleum is present. It runs to an and gate with the hydro sensor in the top right, submerged in super coolant. This sensor is the temperature over-ride in case the room gets too hot, the supercoolant boils and toggles the build off until it cools. This sensor is also connected to the mechanical airlock beside it, that allows temperature to transfer to the turbine room. The same signal is used to dump petroleum to the liquid lock below and is connected to the first mechanical airlock on an inverted signal.

The combined AND gate signal feeds into another AND gate, and is paired with a liquid pipe thermo sensor, that prevents my supercoolant from freezing in the pipes, and allows it to bypass the aquatuner.

The bottom aquatuner is much easier. A simple hydro sensor connects to the upper mechanized airlock, and allows the petroleum feed when needed. The aquatuner itself is connected to an AND gate which pairs a liquid thermo sensor and a separate hydro sensor to make sure the aquatuner doesn't run if a) coolant is too cold, b) room has boiled dry.

The mechanized vacuum lock is a bit of a tricky one to explain, and was adapted from here :- 

In the heatsink chamber there are 3 atmo sensors :

 

The middle atmo sensor is to toggle the doors open and allow sour gas into the room if the pressure falls below 6kg. Once the pressure goes above 20kg, the left atmo sensor will reset the airlocks into a vacuum and cut off the sour gas feed. The lower right atmo sensor will lock down the build if the pressure falls too low for a prolonged period - which allows the aquatuners to retain their heat and get boiling - this is a fail-safe for if you didn't have a constant supply of Oil for example.

Finally, the mechanized door pump is simple as hell. Clock sensors toggle the system on for 3% of the cycle at various intervals - buffer gates then control the majority of the doors closing. The upper most door is on a not signal to stop gas from flowing back from the condensing room. The 2nd from top door has a continuation of the buffer signal and feeds down the left wall into a filter/not gate to close the bottom left doors before the pump starts moving the sour gas - again, to avoid gas from going back into the heatsink room. 

 

**Edit** 

I've since made a ridiculously easy version of this build, that's slightly less efficient in terms of power needed to run, but uses far less space age materials and has hardly any automation - for those of you who want to get your head around the basics.
 

 

Mwah.xox

-Life

 

[wachunga]

I tried to proofread but my brain turned to mush halfway through the automation bit. Uh, looks good?

[Lifegrow]

7 hours ago, wachunga said:

I tried to proofread but my brain turned to mush halfway through the automation bit. Uh, looks good?

Hah, thanks bud - mine too  

[Xuhybrid]

You're having too much fun with all the new space materials lol.

[Lifegrow]

16 minutes ago, Xuhybrid said:

You're having too much fun with all the new space materials lol.

Well the point of this build was to not use too much thermium/insulate to be honest.

Supercoolant is really easy to farm as a general rule, so it's opened up some new build ideas

That being said, i'm working on 2 builds that remove the need for supercoolant entirely.

[Rotintin]

Definitely going to be building the #boombox in my current base.

#bestnamesforlife

#youlovehashtagstooright?

[0xFADE]

great name.  Gotta be some other refinements to the design that use the super cold natural gas to drop the temp of the hot sour so they both come out nicer.

[Icywolf]

Very clean design, I would love to try to replicate it in a survival game

[Lifegrow]

9 hours ago, 0xFADE said:

great name.  Gotta be some other refinements to the design that use the super cold natural gas to drop the temp of the hot sour so they both come out nicer.

On bigger designs i'd been letting the boiled natural gas "bubble" through the sour gas, but it seemed to make very little difference. I had visions of making a Ye Oldé Beowulf bubbler, but the design just didn't work right. 

I'm sure if you had numerous handling chambers, you could use some of the liquid methane heat to precool the sour gas further before it hits your condensing room, but that would only be necessary if you're boiling way more oil into sour gas. I.e. a much larger build with a huge throughput.

Spoiler

Like this big boy for example : 

 

[0xFADE]

It could be something rather simple like exiting vent pipes going though the area that has sour gas.  Any efficiency increase should be reflected as a reduction in the power per gas ratio.

[Lifegrow]

4 hours ago, 0xFADE said:

It could be something rather simple like exiting vent pipes going though the area that has sour gas.  Any efficiency increase should be reflected as a reduction in the power per gas ratio.

In the picture above spoiler pic, the sour gas boils the liquid methane. Although it might be hard to see, the liquid methane falls behind some mesh tiles at the top, and the only thing that comes into contact with it is sour gas. Can't get much more direct than that.

I've since added a vacuum airlock to the top, but honestly - the power usage barely altered a jot - like less than a KJ difference over a cycle.

Sour gas is just a troll  

 

[Rotintin]

This thing is awesome, just made it it in space. Took about 20 cycles with 18 Dupes. Thanks for the guide!

[Lifegrow]

7 minutes ago, Rotintin said:

This thing is awesome, just made it it in space. Took about 20 cycles with 18 Dupes. Thanks for the guide!

Awesome work bud  Any problems during setup ?

[Rotintin]

13 minutes ago, Lifegrow said:

Awesome work bud  Any problems during setup ?

I'm still fine tuning it, the super coolant I added was already chilled to -100 so I've had to add some heat to the system to keep the aquatuners running and the gas flowing. I'll post back when it's stable.

[Lifegrow]

30 minutes ago, Rotintin said:

I'm still fine tuning it, the super coolant I added was already chilled to -100 so I've had to add some heat to the system to keep the aquatuners running and the gas flowing. I'll post back when it's stable.

Hate to link you this now - but i've since made a smaller/easier version. The idea was to make a build for people who are still struggling to get their space materials - so it's small and cheap :

This one produces just 1kg/s natural gas, but due to the lack of automation (this was meant to be the easiest build possible) the Boom Box is more efficient in terms of power cost to run. This fella takes ~1050kj of power per cycle, however that includes gas pumps to provide the gas to natural gas gens - so it's probably not that far off.