How to flare only "excess" output?

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wheezil
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How to flare only "excess" output?

Post by wheezil »

I have a steam cracker turning methanol into propene + residual, both of which are useful. I can buffer them to a point, but if one use dominates, the other will eventually starve. I'd like to flare off the "excess" output, which seems simple if I could cross-control two valves:
Valve1: flares propene if residual is empty
Valve2: flares residual if propene is empty
But I can't find a "circuit-controllable" valve, of the five valve types (inspector, non-return, overflow, top-up, convertor), and the flare stack is also not controllable. How do I solve this? I can't just use two overflow valves, because if neither output is consumed, both will flare and lead to waste.

Or maybe the answer is, use two overflow valves, but control the upstream input to the cracker? Or control the power to the cracker?

Thanks
john

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Re: How to flare only "excess" output?

Post by mmmPI »

I think the vanilla pump is your circuit-controllable non-return valve.
Having a tank filling up for each fluid/gas allow for reading the quantity of either propene or residual. And add pumps connecting those tanks to flare stack.
Then you can use combinators to do operation on those numbers if needed, and trigger the pumps accordingly.

Connecting the propene tank to the residual pump, you could enable if propene <10. Same if you connect the tank of residual to the propene pump, and enable if residual <10.

This doesn't require combinators but will cause both output to go to the flare stack if they both are low. Which makes little sense. Hence the potential use of combinators. 2 deciders for each pumps. If propene <10 output 1 green. If residual >24500 output 1 green. For one . and If residual <10 output 1 green. If propene >24500 output 1 green.
Then pumps enable when green =2. (requires wiring each pump with different wire color).

This kind of logic may be better integrated upstream to only do methanol cracking on certain condition, by triggering a pump feeding/blocking the methanol to the steam cracker.

Hopefully i didn't misunderstood the case and it can help :)

wheezil
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Re: How to flare only "excess" output?

Post by wheezil »

Thanks mmmPI!

I hadn't thought of the vanilla pump. And your caution about "pumps on when both empty" is wise, that would be a problem because then nothing would ever fill. I can simplify your logic using an arithmetic combinator to calculate residual-propene -> A signal and then testing A > 2200 for residual flare and A < -2200 for propene flare. This is with an inline tank capacity 2.5k. I can use negative numbers in a constant, just not enterable using the slider.

john

mmmPI
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Re: How to flare only "excess" output?

Post by mmmPI »

yep that's better :)

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