Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Hello everyone

 

Introduction

This is about a new plumping part which i would like to see in the game. It uses the energy of gas under pressure to produce electrical energy. In the process the gas will be cooled down as well. A nice and realistic addition to the newly added geysers. It would be some sort of steam generator or engine which could be used to convert the hot steam emitted by an steam geyser into cool water and electricity.

 

Idea

My idea focuses on steam geysers. They emit tons of water in form of hot steam which is a great source for a permanent water supply, if you can deal with the heat. Sadly there is no proper way to deal with it, besides transferring the heat to another medium. There should be a steam generator or a steam engine of some sort which converts the heat energy to electrical energy. This way the heat wouldn't be just straight up wasted and it wouldn't make it a giant effort to gain water from hot steam.

 

Physic

This works with any gas, since such generators use the higher pressure that hot gas puts on pipes but its commonly used with steam. They run the high-velocity gas (due to high pressure) through turbines which convert the kinetic energy(movement energy) of the gas to electrical energy. This also cools the gas down. So electrical energy can be won by cooling down hot gas without emitting the heat energy to its surrounding. Important for this procedure is, that the output area of the gas is at a lower pressure than the input area so the gas flows from input to output. Such generators generate between 1 and 4 kilowatts, depending on size and efficiency.

There is of course higher physics to it but since the game held it easy so far with the physics i guess it should do it here just as well.

 

In game

In the game the steam generator would be a simple plumbing part like a hydrolyzer, taking in gas and emitting electricity and the same gas but cooled down by a certain amount. Maybe even producing a different amount of electricity, depending on the inserted pressure and the density of the gas.The Problem with this idea are the gas pumps which would have to insert the gas, since they overheat very easily at 75-125 degrees (depending on building material). There are two ways i see how to solve this.

One would be to add heat resistant versions of plumping parts to be able to pump off the hot gas without overheating the components. Pumping it through a steam generator would produce energy out of it and cool down the gas.

The other would be to include natural gas flow between gas vents depending on the surrounding pressure of the different vents. This way a small high pressured room with a geyser(room A) connected to another cooler and low pressured room(room B) by gas pipes and vents would create a pressure based gas flow from  A to B without having to add any external pressure building devices like a gas pump. In room B a gas pump could pump out any cooled down gas that exits the vent to create a permanent low pressure area to sustain the continuous gas flow. In the middle of the flow a steam generator could take over the cooling part and generate energy from the gas flow.

The energy generated from it shouldn't be at 1-4 kilowatts since this wouldn't be very balanced. I think something like 500 to 800 Watts would be in range, then again that is up to the game devs to decide.

An example construct could look like this. The natural gas generator would be replaced with the steam generator of course. In case heat resistant gas pumps are implemented instead of pressure based gas flow through vents and pipes the geyser room would have to include a gas pump and the water room wouldn't need one.

steamGenerator.jpg

The gas pump would create a lower pressure in room B which causes the steam to flow from the geyser in room A through the generator. There the steam is cooled and energy produced. The energy runs out the heavy watts wire (since output maybe over 1 kilowatts) and the cooled steam ends up in room B. There it condensates to water and is pumped off by the liquid pump. In case there are any other gases in the system the gas pump will remove it. This way dupes could access the system without screwing the pressure system. If it would be a closed system i guess the gas pump wouldn't really be necessary except for optimizing the gas flow in the beginning by removing anything else than water from the system.

 

Please leave a comment about what you think and share / push the topic to get the devs attention.

Greetings Shmobi

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is no pressure in pipes per se. Getting this to work would require redesigning the whole pressure system.

I guess it might happen someday, depending on what the devs want out of the game, but I wouldn't expect it - the development isn't exactly happening on lightning speed and giant reworks like this could easily take years.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

There is no pressure in pipes per se. Getting this to work would require redesigning the whole pressure system.

I guess it might happen someday, depending on what the devs want out of the game, but I wouldn't expect it - the development isn't exactly happening on lightning speed and giant reworks like this could easily take years.

There is pressure more or less. Pressure is nothing else but density of matter. Density is represented by mass / area. Looking at water collecting by 1000kg / 1 tile it seems like 1 tiles is equal to 1 cubic meter since 1 cubic meter contains (at least under normal circumstances on earth) 1000kg of water. When pumping gas through a pipe with no open exit the matter stacks up to a certain density / pressure until the pipe is filled aka. the input pressure equals the pipe pressure. All that really would need to be done is making gas vents act like a gas pump with the input pressure of the surrounding pressure of the gas vent. Hardly any effort actually. That way gas flow depending on external pressure of air vents would be implemented already. Of course the vent would have to output gas if the pressure / density inside the pipe is higher than the surrounding pressure of the vent but its pretty much doing that already.

 

The velocity of the gas in the pipe could be calculated by the relation between the pressure of the exit the gas will take and the pressure of the gas in the pipe. This way you would get the necessary information for the power production of the gas generator without tracking speed or similar stats for the actual gas in the pipe. Cooling down the gas which went through the generator shouldn't be to much work either, since its basically what the thermo regulator is doing except for heating the environment.

 

Simply said, make vents act like bi directional gas pumps depending on the density of the gas in the pipe and the gas surrounding it(like they actually would act in real life, too) and calculate the "speed" for the generator from pipe density and external density for power generation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Shmobi said:

All that really would need to be done is making gas vents act like a gas pump with the input pressure of the surrounding pressure of the gas vent. Hardly any effort actually.

This "hardly any effort" is much more complex than you think it is.

For starters, the pressure on vent tile can vary wildly as low pressure gases replace high pressure ones. Change in gas mass of 2000 grams in one "tick" is perfectly feasible. Meaning the vent would flip from input to output.

Multiple inputs and outputs without clear order are currently really badly handled. And there is no clear solution to that. So only the simplest cases would work well here.

And one pump feeding 2+ vents? Under your model, you'd need bridges everywhere to ensure it actually works. Otherwise the times the vent gets overpressured by a tiny bit would totally scramble the pipe directions until the vent un-pressurized.

And your whole idea with adding pressure to pipes would require actually programming that. Pipes don't have pressure, they have "packets" of stuff in them and direction of travel.

So no, it's a total rewrite of the whole pipe mechanic rather than "hardly any effort".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Coolthulhu said:

This "hardly any effort" is much more complex than you think it is.

For starters, the pressure on vent tile can vary wildly as low pressure gases replace high pressure ones. Change in gas mass of 2000 grams in one "tick" is perfectly feasible. Meaning the vent would flip from input to output.

Multiple inputs and outputs without clear order are currently really badly handled. And there is no clear solution to that. So only the simplest cases would work well here.

And one pump feeding 2+ vents? Under your model, you'd need bridges everywhere to ensure it actually works. Otherwise the times the vent gets overpressured by a tiny bit would totally scramble the pipe directions until the vent un-pressurized.

And your whole idea with adding pressure to pipes would require actually programming that. Pipes don't have pressure, they have "packets" of stuff in them and direction of travel.

So no, it's a total rewrite of the whole pipe mechanic rather than "hardly any effort".

Lets not overlook the fact, that pressure based gas flow is only one way to solve it. Heat resistant pumps would be of course the easier and cheaper way to solve the issue but wouldn't offer as much new possibilities. So this is not the issue which blocks the general idea of this topic. Just to have it said.

 

Lets try to think of what has to be done to make pressure based gas flow work by keeping it as simple as it is now.

First lets agree on some facts.

- Machines, gas and liquid flow in pipes are all handles by a synced task. Meaning Input-devices and output devices like liquid pumps, air pumps or vents and so on are all triggered by one synced task at the same time.

- Pressure is represented by density. An area without density (like a pipe without packet) is a vacuum space with no pressure

- This is how a packet acts when the synced task tries to move it in the pipe system through a pipe crossing

  1. Searches for exits. If multiple exits are found, go to the one next in queue (spreading equally). If only one exit found, go towards it

  2. If no exit found, stop whole pipe progress and stop input devices

 

Here is what i think is to do to allow pressure based flow

1. Remove overpressuring of vents since they will act bi directional

2. If task tries to move packet and searches for exits, vent reports to be an exit if the density of the adjacent packet is higher than the density of the vent's tile. But it only outputs enough matter to reach the same density in the tile as the density of the packet will be, once the matter was put out. This way the pressure towards this exit fills slowly up and will stop acting as an output once same density is reached

3. If task triggers input devices (such as gas pumps etc.) vent triggers as an input if the density of the adjacent packet is lower than the density of the vent's tile. But it only inputs enough matter to reach the same density as the adjacent packet and maximal 50% of the venttile's density. This way the pressure towards the pipe fills slowly up  and will stop acting as an input once same density is reached. The 50% is to ensure that it won't change back to output after taking the input.

4. Add a border at which the vent stops acting as an input so it wont split the pressure down to 0.000001g and input mini packets into the pipe system. I would say 50g is the last input the vent takes since that is the last breathable concentration for oxygen. So a minimal density of 100g must be present on the vent's tile to allow the vent to act as an input

 

Using the synced task there should be enough time for the gas to flow after intake or output to avoid programmatically the vent flipping between output and input like crazy(since it doesn't work per "tick" as you said). The limitations to output and input depending on the densities of packet and venttile are avoiding it logically. This way the vent system should still be stable and working as it was before. It is still an easy implementation this way and does not look at stuff like pressure balance inside the pipe system. As i said, since the game is keeping it simple with everything else, this shouldn't be overthought either.

 

Sorry if my sentences are sometimes a little broken or hard to understand. I am not a native speaker :p and in general not good in building readable sentences. If I am wrong about any of my assumptions or overlooked a detail, please explain exactly what and why so i can follow your thoughts.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Shmobi said:

The Problem with this idea are the gas pumps which would have to insert the gas, since they overheat very easily at around 70 degrees (call me out here if I'm wrong, it doesn't say it on the wiki).

You can build them from different materials, some raise the temperature point where overheat damage happens (details in the tooltip of the materials).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Masterpintsman said:

You can build them from different materials, some raise the temperature point where overheat damage happens (details in the tooltip of the materials).

Good hint! I checked it out

Built with Steel or Gold Amalgam it gains +50 overheat temperature. This still only raises it to 125 from the original 75 tho which wouldn't be enough to resist the 150 degrees hot steam. Less cooling would have to be done to absorb the steam but it would still be a lot of heat to deal with since geysers emit constantly a huge amount of 150 degrees hot steam.

 

I updated this in the main post

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Please be aware that the content of this thread may be outdated and no longer applicable.

×
  • Create New...