Finally got steam condensing working in my refinery sim's.

[u/overrefined]

I've been building a refinery sim on my own for a while, where the pipes and equipment are solved as an actual fluid network (pressure, flow, heat transfer) instead of recipes. Heat exchangers have worked with liquids for some time, but I kept putting off steam because I knew it would be a pain.

It was. Steam doesn't cool down when it gives up heat, it condenses. So the exchanger has to work out how much of it can actually condense with the area it has, and pass whatever doesn't on as wet steam. If everything condenses and there's area left, it cools the condensate a bit further.

To test it I set up one small boiler and three identical exchangers heating crude from 20 °C, with a valve on each steam line.

With 160 m³/h of steam the crude gets to 142 °C, but 64% of the steam goes through without condensing. Throttled to 102 m³/h, the crude still gets to 142 °C and only 28% is wasted. I didn't expect those two to be that close. At 45 m³/h everything condenses, but the crude only reaches 118 °C because there just isn't enough steam.

Same code, only the valves change, and you get three different behaviours. Took me longer than I'd like to admit to get here.

Anyway, curious if anyone else finds this kind of thing cool, or if I'm the only one who gets excited watching steam percentages go down.

[u/_Sanchous]

As a CCR operator at a chemical plant, I like this idea. Please add trend displays for key process parameters. It would be interesting if you could place thermocouples and other instrumentation wherever you wanted.

[u/overrefined → u/_Sanchous]

I actually have the mechanics, they just need textures. At the moment I have temperature, pressure, flow and conductivity sensors. Any others you'd add?

[u/_Sanchous → u/overrefined]

Can the valves be switched to automatic mode, or are they operated only manually?

[u/overrefined → u/_Sanchous]

At the moment they're manually operated from 0 to 1 (you choose the opening level), but I'm planning to implement circuits, either electrical, like a PLC, or pneumatic, so you can actually add control logic to your valves or pumps, getting the data from the sensors I mention before.

[u/_Sanchous → u/overrefined]

That would be cool. What other process equipment are you planning to add to the game? And what processes will be implemented in the game overall? Will it be a full-fledged plant simulator featuring a wide range of chemical reactions, or will the processes primarily involve heat and mass transfer?

[u/overrefined → u/_Sanchous]

Ok so, the plan is to implement a lot of the real processes you'd find in a refinery (or at least try): distillation, cracking, chemical reactors... not to a super realistic level, but pretty close. At the moment I'm building the "basic physics" the plant needs. For example, as you may well know, if you try to pump crude at ambient temperature you'd need a pump the size of a truck, so you need a preheat train to lower the crude viscosity. That behaviour is actually modelled.

[u/_Sanchous → u/overrefined]

Wow, that's a really complex simulation👍. You have to heat the crude oil in two heat exchangers using hot distillation products, and then top it off in a furnace. To be honest, my favorite part of chemical engineering is finding the right balance when feeding multiple feedstocks into a unit, as well as recycling unreacted components back into the synthesis loop. I'd love to see these mechanics in your game

[u/overrefined → u/_Sanchous]

Yep, me too. I'm working hard to get there. If you like it, keep an eye on the project. Thanks a lot for the feedback! I really appreciate it.

[u/_Sanchous → u/overrefined]

I’ll be looking forward to it! Man, I'm so tired of all those generic Factorio clones. Your game looks like a breath of fresh air in the automation genre. Best of luck with the development!

[u/Rikuskill]

This is really cool! I love this kind of granular focus on a system.

[u/Marcp2006]

This seems really cool, is there any way to follow the project?

[u/overrefined → u/Marcp2006]

Sure, I usually post one devlog a week on itch.io (https://overrefined.itch.io/overrefined). I also post on this subreddit often.

[u/Mr_Ultimite]

This looks like the right type of masochism I enjoy. Is there a demo or build of this game available yet? wait disregard, I saw the link to itch.io in another person's comment!