Gasoline, Diesel & Coal Production Done Better

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

As far as I understand somebody added a means of hand-crafting gasoline from plant matter. While the process itself is scienmagically possible, it’s pretty involved and should be simulated more properly to flesh out the road-warrior CDDA end game.

1.) Coal->syncrude
Consumables: charcoal, hydrogen, fuel
Equipment: hydrocracking reactor built with super-alloy, water and welder in the presence of maxed cooking and mechanics skills and proper recipe
Output: syncrude
The direct liquefaction process of turning coal/charcoal/biomass to oil revolves around the principle of breaking up the huge low-hydrogen/weight carbon chains by a process called hydrocracking. The first step is to treat the solid with hydrogen gas at very high pressure and temperature to produce syncrude. Hydrogen feedstock will have to be evolved through electrolysis of water because the more economical chemical methods of production are too involved to be properly simulated in a game. This process would require a mighty pressure vessel as a reactor custom-built for the job. It would require a very expensive corrosion resistant alloy and a welding tool to make in-game, providing you’re talented enough.

1.5) Hydrogen feedstock
Consumables: water, fuel, electricity?
Equipment: stack electrolytic cell (superalloy, proton exchange membranes looted from labs and gold/platinum for the electrodes, welder, maxed mechanics skill and recipe. Also: finally a use for gold!)
Output: hydrogen
The easiest way to commercially create hydrogen is to use heated, pressurized electrolytic cells to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. Attach this device to the hydrocracking reactor and you have an oil producing machine.

Combine the two into a hydrocracking reactor and electrolytic cell assembly and feed it charcoal, water, fuel, electricity and human sacrifice to receive syncrude.

2.) Syncrude distillation:
Consumables: syncrude/crude, fuel
Equipment: 2-story column with metal packing/trays, reboiler and condenser made with lots of metal sheets, water, saw and welder and maxed cooking, mechanics skill and recipe
Output: gasoline, diesel
Now that you have your liquid gold you can simply distill it into gasoline(naphtha) and diesel in a moderately sized packed fractionating column. The gasoline you get comes out pretty toxic but chances are you won’t live long enough to regret the cancer benzene exposure will give you.

Here is a handy block flow diagram of the real-life direct liquefaction process I edited for your pleasure. As you can see the real process is a little bit more involved than what I outlined here, but I believe I captured the general gist of it sufficiently enough for a game. The red outline exists to help you spot the main production process.

Would you like to learn more?

1. http://www.npc.org/study_topic_papers/18-ttg-coals-to-liquids.pdf
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_electrolysis

2

Most of the stuff here would be easy to program, except for gaseous hydrogen.

Currently hydrogen is a bit hacky - it is implemented as “hydrogen cell”, never as hydrogen itself. This hydrogen cell is made of metal, is high-tech (can’t be produced by the player) and generally unsuited to being used for anything but the sci-fi stuff.

Someone would need to implement gas phase items - most importantly them refusing to get spawned outside container (so that you don’t get a “pile of hydrogen” when acid eats its container) and container limitations (can’t store pressurized hydrogen in a regular tank).
This part would be simplified if the hydrogen could be only drained from a vehicle and only stored in a vehicle. Gas phase wouldn’t be needed (because we could just alter the vehicle functions not to drop hydrogen).

Another thing is the 2 story building. We don’t have a system that supports tall or wide “functional” buildings yet, although a hacky implementation could exist (it could check if the top section exists upon examination).

If the building was to be powered, it would be yet another thing. It would either need to drain charges from batteries put into it (probably the same slot as charcoal) or in draw charge from a nearby vehicle.

As you can see a great deal of what would have to be done is… simply not done yet.

3

We can t run our own industrial complex…yet.

4

It seems a bit out of reach for one survivor to build.
Elaborating:

About hydrogen:
Electrolysis should certainly be possible given time and energy, but the rest don’t seem easy.

I found from the .doc you provided the moles of H comparable to that of C (~2:1 moles to make gasoil and naphtha)
It means that for ~1kg product you’d need 2/13kg hydrogen, the rest being carbon.

This means 23m3 (a room) just for storage of 1kg hydrogen, or having to use pressurized Hydrogen.
(as an ideal gas, i calculated that 2/13kg of Hydrogen stored in a container of 1m3 will have to be pressurized at ~3.6bar)
(Gas density of hydrogen: 0.085 kg/m3 @ 1.013 Bar and 15°C)

From this, i surmise that it will be possible to store small quantities of hydrogen, in large tanks, pressurized at doable pressures.

But for the actual creation of the syncrude, i see 750–800oF and pressure 3,200 psig!!! This is clearly too much for a survivor to handle.

Now for the distillation:
Two story buildings are problematic, as will be the (required for distillation) temperatures of 350C without burning the syncrude. (you’d need zero oxygen in the fuel)

  • you need to upgrade the resulting naphtha & gasoil as they will contain sulfur and will be having pretty low octane/cetane numbers…

I’d love to see the appropriate machinery inside faction bases though. They might be a nice critical resource.

On the other hand, i’d much more support biofuels than synthoil. Afaik these are much easier to produce than synthetic petrol.
Afaik biodiesel is ridiculously easy to create from pretty much any organic oil (used or unused) + lye + heating at ~50C.
For bioethanol, the procedure is about fermenting sugars, then distilling them and using the product like gasoline.

Taking into account the lower calorific value of biofuels compared to petrelaic products, i’d say a rough equivalence of 1:1,5 petrelaic:biofuel would be valid (if we go that far in simulating this)

EDIT- fixed an error at the calculation of pressure.

5

Coolthulhu: You’re right about hydrogen but a workaround might be to just not have gaseous hydrogen exist at all. It could just be abstracted away by attaching the electrolysis device directly to the reactor and turning water directly into syncrude and assuming that the hydrogen can’t be recovered from the process. The electricity aspect can be done away with also by adding a generator object to the assembly.

Valpo: It has to start somewhere. AFAIK factories are going in at some point and this is arguably the most necessary type of factory to create.

JCD you’ll have to forgive me but I’m going to try to address your wonderful post in three parts! You have to remember that this is just a game and that the real world companies that make this equipment aren’t black-box supermen. They use the same tools you use (a welding tool) in the case of reactors, columns and other vessels and have the same expertise you can pick up from books and papers. You have to keep in mind that all of this has been achieved by multiple countries in the 40s and 50s back when they didn’t have access to our modern precision tools.

[quote=“jcd, post:4, topic:9027”]It seems a bit out of reach for one survivor to build.
Elaborating:

About hydrogen:
Electrolysis should certainly be possible given time and energy, but the rest don’t seem easy.

I found from the .doc you provided the moles of H comparable to that of C (~2:1 moles to make gasoil and naphtha)
It means that for ~1kg product you’d need 2/13kg hydrogen, the rest being carbon.

This means 23m3 (a room) just for storage of 1kg hydrogen, or having to use pressurized Hydrogen.
(as an ideal gas, i calculated that 2/13kg of Hydrogen stored in a container of 1m3 will have to be pressurized at ~3.6bar)
(Gas density of hydrogen: 0.085 kg/m3 @ 1.013 Bar and 15°C)

From this, i surmise that it will be possible to store small quantities of hydrogen, in large tanks, pressurized at doable pressures.

But for the actual creation of the syncrude, i see 750–800oF and pressure 3,200 psig!!! This is clearly too much for a survivor to handle.[/quote]
Your math looks right to me. I disagree with the last sentence though. I’ll change the electrolyzer design to be more feasible for a survivor. Here is some background:

Here is the process the Germans invented during WW1 which utilized hydrogen pressures of 20-70MPa. As far as I understand they used precision machined compressors to achieve those pressures. Modern day high-pressure electrolysis can be achieved without the use of a compressor by simply filling a electrolyzer with nafion (or any other proton exchange) membranes. You could realistically find these in any lab because they’re used very often for lab-scale separations of hydrogen. There were boxes of them in every nano lab in my school.

Those conditions you listed were regularly achieved by a bunch of regular German dudes at the turn of last century with very primitive equipment and knowledge. While it would be very scary and impossible for most New Englanders to attempt to build pressure vessels of those specs you have to remember that this is CDDA we’re talking about and not real life. Some players (namely I) would enjoy playing a Nicola Tesla type of a mad scientist practicing a very unsafe and unethical type of engineering with no civilized world to place restrictions on their work.

In conclusion I feel it’s better to modify step 1.5 to answer your very valid point with science voodoo:
Stack electrolyzer created with superalloy and proton exchange membranes looted from labs in the presence of a charged welding tool.

[quote=“jcd, post:4, topic:9027”]Now for the distillation:
Two story buildings are problematic, as will be the (required for distillation) temperatures of 350C without burning the syncrude. (you’d need zero oxygen in the fuel)

  • you need to upgrade the resulting naphtha & gasoil as they will contain sulfur and will be having pretty low octane/cetane numbers…

I’d love to see the appropriate machinery inside faction bases though. They might be a nice critical resource.[/quote]
I feel like it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch at this point to hand-wave away the dirty specifics of column design and assume total purity of the feed for the purposes of CDDA. The zero oxygen bit is as simple to achieve as making the column air tight and throwing away the initial bit of burnt sludge at start up. I don’t really care to look up how much oxygen can be dissolved in oil, but I’m assuming that the answer is sufficiently minuscule.

Maybe we can say that for lore reasons the CDDA cars are capable of running on much dirtier fuels hence no need to upgrade the naphtha. Here is an unverified forums guy who says he did this to his old car for laughs.

Faction bases are great, but I feel this is something a player should be able to attempt on their own. Think of how mad max you’d feel once you can sell gasoline to your friends and shift power dynamics of the wastes singlehandedly.

[quote=“jcd, post:4, topic:9027”]On the other hand, i’d much more support biofuels than synthoil. Afaik these are much easier to produce than synthetic petrol.
Afaik biodiesel is ridiculously easy to create from pretty much any organic oil (used or unused) + lye + heating at ~50C.
For bioethanol, the procedure is about fermenting sugars, then distilling them and using the product like gasoline.

Taking into account the lower calorific value of biofuels compared to petrelaic products, i’d say a rough equivalence of 1:1,5 petrelaic:biofuel would be valid (if we go that far in simulating this)

EDIT- fixed an error at the calculation of pressure.[/quote]
I’d love me some biofuels! The more fuels the merrier.

6

I am totaly for the abillity to craft up our own machinery and refinerys.
Though i think the most i would do with gasoline would be fueling my flamethrower xD.
Its just too risky driving with a gas driven vehicle… the explosion can be extremely huge.

7

JohnieRWilkins, you must be pulling my leg. Usually i am the one proposing things others consider beyond the reach of a survivor :P.

I’m sorry that i will not respond in detail as you have done, but what i write seem more and more like ramblings to me, i seem to be digging more and more into it (learning things like that metal tanks won’t keep gaseous Hydrogen without some kind of electric or gravitic force to hold it in) while i really should be learning about economics for my exams.

Here goes:

I will argue on my own that almost anything is doable: One can start with small/scavenged machines, then use them to build larger ones, more precise ones etc. etc.
Like converting scavenged electrical engines + scrap +welder to make a crude metalworking lathe, and then using this to create proper steel parts in order to (also using things from other fields of engineering e.g. electronics) make an improved lathe…
…And so on until its possible to implement the project he wants.

This is most certainly what factions would do. Essentially what humanity has always done.

But… one man… on his own… starting with simple tools… cannot do everything in one lifetime. He will be limited by his knowledge (simplistic that 3-4 books read within one month are sufficient to get you to skill 10 = ~word class skill – real practical + theoretical mastery could require a lifetime) and by the work-hours he can dish out.
Most of the people that achieved such tech advances had the workhours, the industry and the technology to support them + many near-misses and failures. And even then, even if they build it with little help, they created something that took a lot of polishing (work-hours + industry) until it became practical.

PS. If you can get this accepted… i want you to argue in favour of other stuff too. Like crafting of electric engines, compressors, water turbines and ultra-supercritical steam powerplants(!) to power my post-cataclysmic empire.

8

What we need is some npcs that we can take care of and abuse to guide to build amazing things.

9

A humble man understands that he is not God and accepts the limitations imposed onto him by the universe.

*builds a submarine, rocket and orbital vehicle in back yard.