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Power generation ideas...

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 6:52 am
by featherwinglove
When I saw 165C steam coming out of my boilers going to my old-fashioned steam engines and 500C steam coming from my nuclear steam generators to my turbines, my eyes kinda sorta lit up with the possibilities.

Tier 1: Change nothing. I think it's perfect now (in post-steam-is-a-separate-fluid 0.15)

Tier 2: Better boilers, say 250C steam going to a basic steam turbine. But it produces only 165C steam if you put in raw wood and most things that have fuel value (e.g. small power poles, wooden chests, etc..) 190C steam if you put in wood (as in planks), 220C steam if you put in coal, and 250C steam with solid fuel.

Tier 3: The implemented nuclear stuff. Maybe add an oil fueled steam boiler that can take light and/or heavy oil to generate 500C steam; for personality, the flame turret should be a prerequisite technology.

Tier 4: I have too much rocket fuel! Gas generators which burn rocket fuel and generate 1200C hot gas, which then proceeds to a gas turbine, which generates power and vents 600C hot gas, which then, assuming there's a pipe to pick it up, goes to a heat recovery boiler which generates 500C steam, which then goes to nuclear steam turbines. The gas generator should need lots of gear packs as it would contain a massive air compressor and a small turbine to run it. This would be almost identical to a real COSAG power station in principle.

More Tier 4: A diesel generator takes heavy oil directly, which it then burns and generates electricity and, assuming there's a pipe to pick it up, 198C hot gas. This hot gas goes to the heat recovery boiler to generate 165C steam compatible with first tier steam engines. I picked 198C for the hot gas temperature so it has the same ratio to steam (6:5) as the gas turbine exhaust for more hot gas options. Incidentally, piping gas generator hot gas directly to a heat recovery boiler would generate 1000C steam (I changed that from 1000C hot gas which would produce 833.333...C steam.) This cool steam would also be a good choice for the Bergius process. (I've never heard of a real COSAD power station, but big freighters, tankers, and cruise ships use their diesel exhaust to heat up the fuel oil bunkers otherwise the stuff won't flow through the plumbing properly.)

Re: Power generation ideas...

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 8:18 am
by Aeternus
Bob's Power has this implemented to a degree. Using rocket fuel or other high energy chemical fuels to generate very hot steam is a thought though. But I do not think the game discerns between specific chemical fuel types - if you allow a burner to take chemical fuel, it'll accept all of them. So your high energy boiler could even run on wood.

Come to think of it... A stack inserter feeding wood into a burner at full speed would be... funny :mrgreen:

Re: Power generation ideas...

Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 5:37 am
by featherwinglove
The distinction that locomotives make as to fuel is part of why I'd like to see this in vanilla. I love Bob's mods by the way, although KS Power has had more influence on my actual games; also worth looking up for any potential bystanders who would like to mod in the functionality of my suggestion.

Funny thing I did was build my first oil refinery in Mojo Resource Processing. It has a badly hacked version of the NHC burner assembly machine which generates 245PU/sec. Even without pollution damage enabled, it's like Swan Hills mosquitoes in July crafting the science packs for Automation 1. Or with a huge starting area, watch the trees wilt. To keep my base habitable, I set up a basic inserter feeding it with planks getting its power from a single wind turbine shared with three ammunition machines. Building the refinery thus took only an hour, and the air remained breathable.

Mods which do generate different qualities of steam turn their boilers into crafting machines and use recipes where the steam they want is the output. It isn't very vanilla-like.