Alien v0.5: perpetual TRUE glitchless free-energy Steam Turbine | No vent covers | (Sandbox prototype / proof of concept).

[Boxman_90]

BAMBOOZLE!

The build is dead. I made an error of reasoning when deducting a solution to the 10kg/s flow requirement. I built a machine out of that and it just 'happened' to work due to another completely unrelated bug. I just built another machine that should've worked if my line of reasoning was correct, but that one doesn't work so it wasn't. Some other bug is at play - somebody suggested the transformers.

The counter-argument is mindblowingly simple; if 2000W output is requested, at all times at least one turbine must be running, which means at all times 10kg/s of steam is cooled from 227 to 152C. The heat capacities don't support this.

Thanks for playing!

 

Mantis has evolved into a full-blown Alien! 

After publishing my portable Mantis build a few days ago, some people pointed out that the blocking of individual vents might be considered a glitch. I don't fully agree, but I heard you, so hereby present my (very, very messy) proof-of-concept for a design based on the Mantis that does not use *any* glitches, including vent-blocking, and still produces infinite energy and cooling. 

By using 5 steam turbines in series, the flow is effectively limited to 2kg/s, just as blocking vents would do, while the total energy-requirement for converting heat to electricity remains the same. The only drawback is that material cost is higher and proper heat distribution is tricky, but possible. Since this was a quick proof-of-concept, nothing is optimized and the whole thing is extremely messy. It works though, and the vid linked below will show it running perpetually for >20 cycles. At the end of the vid I'm cycling through the overlays.

Current features:

• No fuel required (no magma, steam vents or anything). 
• Zero glitches; no tepidizer-glitches, helium pressure-offsetting and no vent blocking
• No overheating-but-not-breaking
• Perpetual self-sustained operation
• Fully self-contained and self-cooled
• Perpetual heat destruction
• Currently badly optimized for a maximum sustained output of 700W
• Currently not viable outside the sandbox due to material cost

I'll be working on optimizing this thing until it works on water, and might even go as far as making it viable for dupe-construction. Fundamentally there is nothing standing in the way of a water-based portable setup, but it will require a lot of work.

The key point I wanted to make is that this demonstrates that limiting the flow is not what makes perpetual energy+cooling through the steam turbine viable, it's simply that energy is currently not conserved by design when transforming heat into electricity. This is why I'm not sure if port blocking - and the way it's coded currently with it specifically evaluating single tiles - is necessarily a bug.

Anyway, I'll keep you updated on any progress I make with this thing in this thread. Hopefully I can cut down the production costs significantly enough for it to be viable in a live build.

Enjoy the vid!

AlienV0.5 Forumsave.sav

[Lurve]

I consider door pumps a glitch, especially when unpowered.

[Boxman_90]

They're easily powered by the 700W that it currently outputs, and why would it be a glitch? It's perfectly logical and actual real-world hatches would produce the exact same effect.

In essence a door-pump works on the exact principle of a workshop compressor; intake valve opens -> chamber fills -> intake valve closes -> exhaust valve opens -> 'chamber closes' (piston moves) -> exhaust valve closes -> repeat.

[Lurve]

Real world hatches would simply fail to close rather than operate against a pressure gradient greater than they were built for in their capacity as a door.  Same for the "line of doors making a perfect vacuum" trick. 

[ETA] There's a term for a device using the same mechanical effect, but designed to pump a medium: a "pump."

[Oozinator]

5 minutes ago, Boxman_90 said:

They're easily powered by the 700W that it currently outputs, and why would it be a glitch? It's perfectly logical and actual real-world hatches would produce the exact same effect.

In essence a door-pump works on the exact principle of a workshop compressor; intake valve opens -> chamber fills -> intake valve closes -> exhaust valve opens -> 'chamber closes' (piston moves) -> exhaust valve closes -> repeat.

*sniff* *sniff* uhm ok.

 

[Boxman_90]

Obviously these are top-of-the line door hatches, then. I mean, this is a space-traveling civilization that transported real live people to an asteroid! Their technology must be wayyy more advanced than ours 

[Lurve]

Sure.  Also it has more glitches.

[Boxman_90]

Bottom line is, i'm not doing anything special to the doors to make them work, and the game mechanics simply do their magic. I'm not tricking the game or the components into operating outside of its specifications - a max pressure differential between both sides for the door before it stops working simply isn't in the game.

I mean, if you want to argue that ONI is not a perfect 1:1 reflection of real life, sure, i'll never contest that. Otherwise building a perpetuum mobile wouldn't be possible to begin with. Though I respectfully disagree with your opinion on a door-pump being 'abusing a glitch'

[hpongledd]

@Boxman_90 face it, against this community you will never win. Even if you wouldnt use any doors or gas/liquid  exploits or blocking stuff. Most probably somebody will tell you solely the reasong that you are breathing is considered a glitch.

ah and why are you so desperatly trying to make a steam turbine without any glitches?

[Boxman_90]

You have a point there.

I like the challenge It's like digital lego's. People say "you can't build that" and I have tremendous fun finding out ways to do so, and seeing them work

[wachunga]

Kindly post the save. This should not work and if it is then there is a bug somewhere.

You are misunderstanding the effect of stacking the turbines. It will reduce the overall steam throughput to 2 kg/s only if the turbines are running at 20% uptime in which case the power output for each stack would be 2000W or 4000W total for your build. Each stack will still require 3.1MW of heat to run the turbines at 20% or 6.2MW total for your build. 4000W of power can produce 3.9MW of heat via aquatuners with super coolant. The math doesn't add up.

[simonchvz]

Looks like a neat POC.  It's difficult for me to see what's going on in that vid (issues on my end, not yours).  Can you clarify a few things?

1 hour ago, Boxman_90 said:

By using 5 steam turbines in series, the flow is effectively limited to 2kg/s/tile

Is this just because of step-down pressure differentials?  It's not immediately clear to me why this is the case.

1 hour ago, Boxman_90 said:

and proper heat distribution is tricky, but possible

I can make out the ATs at each level and at the top.  Are the ones in the middle column there for managing temp at their respective levels, part of priming the steam for recycling, or both?  It's not clear why the ones at the top are necessary in either case unless it's just a function of a lack of control over rate of counterflow vs time for heat priming.  

What fluid are you using for the ATs? 

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

7 minutes ago, wachunga said:

It will reduce the overall steam throughput to 2 kg/s

What the OP said is "By using 5 steam turbines in series, the flow is effectively limited to 2kg/s/tile"

2kg/s/tile equals to 10kg/s/turbine. It's the right number, though single turbine also only needs 2kg/s/tile.

12 minutes ago, wachunga said:

Each stack will still require 3.1MW of heat to run the turbines at 20% or 6.2MW total for your build. 4000W of power can produce 3.9MW of heat via aquatuners with super coolant. The math doesn't add up.

I guess that's because the steam is not heated evenly. I'm not pretty sure about that.

3 minutes ago, simonchvz said:

Is this just because of step-down pressure differentials?  It's not immediately clear to me why this is the case.

Not matter how many turbines are stacked, the flow is always 2kg/s/tile

4 minutes ago, simonchvz said:

What fluid are you using for the ATs? 

I strongly suggest super coolant. The bigger Specific Heat Capacity is always the better.

[Boxman_90]

3 hours ago, wachunga said:

Kindly post the save. This should not work and if it is then there is a bug somewhere.

You are misunderstanding the effect of stacking the turbines. It will reduce the overall steam throughput to 2 kg/s only if the turbines are running at 20% uptime in which case the power output for each stack would be 2000W or 4000W total for your build. Each stack will still require 3.1MW of heat to run the turbines at 20% or 6.2MW total for your build. 4000W of power can produce 3.9MW of heat via aquatuners with super coolant. The math doesn't add up.

The bug is that energy is not conserved in ONI.

I will clean up the map and post the save in a bit. I had to break my head several times on why it works, but the math does actually add up. See it like this:

Mantis worked because I only had to heat 2KG of steam/s to get 2000W of power.

Alien works because on average, only one turbine out of 5 is running at a time. So I put in 10kg/s on the bottom one for 10 seconds, and then put in 0kg/s for 40 seconds after that - on average, the throughput is 2KG/s of steam.

The only thing that changed is where I heat the steam. In Mantis, I heat the steam continuously on the bottom Turbine, because it's running continuously. In Alien, the bottom turbine only needs heating 20% of the time - during the other 80%, other aquatuners are running to heat the location of the traveling steam under the other turbines in the column. They're all automated on local temperature.

The energy requirements are identical, and the aquatuners are placed such that each level has an optimal temperature at all times (just above 227C).

-----------------------------------------------------------

GLARINGLY wrong! The bottom vent is momentarily taking in 10kg/s but most definitely still requires a full-time running aquatuner beneath it to make up for the deficit before the next cycle starts.

-----------------------------------------------------------

@simonchvz I hope that clarifies your question a bit too. When I get a more cleaned-up and hopefully more compact version, I'll make a more elaborate vid like the Mantis one. The middle-column aquatuners are indeed for managing local temperature, as I need to heat the steam as it travels at this average rate of 2kg/s. The ones in the top were required because I was lacking capacity there, so all steam would bunch up an never leave the last turbine.

Coolant is super-coolant atm, but it should in theory - if I can contain the heat better - work on Water. I'll work on that in a next version

[wachunga]

What I imagine is happening is that only one tile under each turbine is satisfying the pressure and temperature requirements. Which is the same thing as blocking with tiles. Which is a bug. But until a save is posted that can't be said with certainly. Perhaps there is another bug somewhere. But the point is that the build doesn't work without a bug.

The whole stacking thing is just a way to reduce the amount of steam you need to move with pumps or whatever, it doesn't change the heat required per power produced.

By all means play the game however you want, but don't call a build that relies on bugs glitch-free, because it's not.

[Boxman_90]

Haha, I'll kindly prove you wrong, good sir

If I actually block the tiles under those turbines, all 5 would run continuously and you'd be seeing a 20kW monster.

It's not an easy concept, but I urge you to give it some more thought. I must've spent at least 30 minutes of head-cracking before I convinced myself even. Carefully analyze what's happening, especially these two from the previous post:

• Alien works because on average, only one turbine out of 5 is running at a time.
• The only thing that changed is where I heat the steam.

 

[wachunga]

Post the save.

[Boxman_90]

Added to startpost. Have fun!

Edit// I kind of expect you to eat these your words when you come back, btw.

2 hours ago, wachunga said:

By all means play the game however you want, but don't call a build that relies on bugs glitch-free, because it's not.

Edit2// I'll eat mine, thanks.

[simonchvz]

Spoiler

Please ignore, found my error.  Original post:

55 minutes ago, wachunga said:

Each stack will still require 3.1MW of heat to run the turbines at 20% or 6.2MW total for your build. 4000W of power can produce 3.9MW of heat via aquatuners with super coolant. The math doesn't add up.

@wachungaI'm back-of-the-napkinning this since I'm not at a machine where I can check my numbers, and this may just be me missing a step.  Using a specific heat of 8.44 for supercoolant, I get to your 3.9MJ of heat transfer via AT for 4kJ input.  Using 4.2 SH for steam with a 75K temp differential, I don't come anywhere close to 6.2MW required temp input for 4kg/sec throughput on both stacks combined. I only get ~1.25MW.  What did I miss there?

That can probably be ignored.  Pretty sure it's supposed to have been 75K * 5.  Someone kick me if I'm wrong again.

[Nickerooni]

I haven’t read this whole post, but if that’s supercoolant in the aquatuners, then I believe the math. Like @wachunga says, only the innermost tile will end up at the prerequisite 228 degrees. The outer ones are likely cooler, as per mathematician’s posts. Enough so to make this net positive, since running supercoolant is pretty close to being net positive - even if you make a legitimate no-abuse turbine, like @wachunga and I have done. 

I like the idea of the aquatuners next to the turbines to get them all hot . It’s too bad it triggers this bug where turbines are running off of max temperature rather than min temperature.

Math:

aquatuner costs 1200W to transfer 1232 kDTU/s from supercoolant to the steam

2000W of aquatuner can transfer ~2 MDTU/s

A steam turbine at minimum running legitimately turns 10 kg/s of 228 degree steam into 10kg of 150 degree steam. That’s 3259 kDTU/s.

None of the reduced throughput matters to the above calculation. This is simply the cost of transferring heat and heat deletion.

[mathmanican]

5 minutes ago, wachunga said:

What I imagine is happening is that only one tile under each turbine is satisfying the pressure and temperature requirements. Which is the same thing as blocking with tiles. Which is a bug.

With this logic, then the entire turbine is a bugged anytime it gets near 226.9C or the top pressures is near the bottom pressure, as not all 5 tiles will drop below this temp threshold at the exact same time. To prevent this from happening, you'd need a pressure sensor under each turbine, and above each turbine, that reverse the max/min problem to a min/max problem.

1 hour ago, Boxman_90 said:

By using 5 steam turbines in series, the flow is effectively limited to 2kg/s/tile, just as blocking vents would do, while the total energy-requirement for converting heat to electricity remains the same.

Nice use of @Nickerooni's idea from his post (the math work out great). Instead of using the heat from the aquatuners to reheat condensed steam at the bottom, you are using it at different levels to keep each turbine near optimal running conditions.

1 hour ago, Boxman_90 said:

The key point I wanted to make is that this demonstrates that limiting the flow is not what makes perpetual energy+cooling through the steam turbine viable, it's simply that energy is currently not conserved by design when transforming heat into electricity. This is why I'm not sure if port blocking - and the way it's coded currently with it specifically evaluating single tiles - is necessarily a bug.

This was my favorite part of your post. "Where" you heat the steam is crucial.

To get around port blocking, just stack turbines.  How many?  As many as you want, it doesn't matter.  

Want avoid door pumps? Ok, then combine @Nickerooni's water condensation approach with @Boxman_90's heating at each level approach (saves on heat loss), but stack 20 of them instead of 5.  A stack of 5 turbines means you have to reheat about 2kg/s of water.  A stack of 10 turbines means you have to reheat 1kg/s of water.  A stack of 20 turbines means you have to reheat just .5 kg/s of steam.  The larger the stack, the cheaper the power cost to condense and then reheat. Nickerooni's condensation idea yields a power cost that shrinks linearly as you stack more turbines, while Boxman's approach keeps the power cost to heat each layer the same constant power amount, regardless of how many stacks there are.

Can you combine these two ideas to get your Alien to work without a door pump.  Of course.  Maybe even @wachunga and @Lurve would bow to the awesomeness of the build. However, 

1 hour ago, hpongledd said:

@Boxman_90 face it, against this community you will never win. Even if you wouldnt use any doors or gas/liquid  exploits or blocking stuff. Most probably somebody will tell you solely the reasong that you are breathing is considered a glitch.

 

[Boxman_90]

@Nickerooni I stacked the thing with as many tempshift tiles there are. Kindly check out the save, temperatures are homogeneous inside the steam-chambers.

[mathmanican]

2 hours ago, Boxman_90 said:

I stacked the thing with as many tempshift tiles there are, check out the save, temperatures are homogeneous inside the steam-chambers.

Well, 226.89 and 226.91 both appear as 226.9. 

By the way, I know your math works out just fine.  Nice build. I love the addition of "where" to heat the turbine.  This is going on "The Steam Turbine: Everything you need to know" page. 

[Boxman_90]

Yeah I aimed that at Nickerooni, posted it just as you posted yours. Thanks for the detailed explanation, and nice to see that someone else used a similar approach  We'll see how much of an optimized setup we'll end up with in the longrun

[mathmanican]

I do think we should give a bow to @Nickerooni here, as his idea of stacking turbines is where I'm going to guess you got all this from.  Your addition is to use the power generated to heat the steam at each level, instead of just at the bottom. I'm pretty sure you could benefit from building his condensation run version. I forsee an Alien with a spine (the condensation chamber), with a big belly (two turbines next to each other - or three if you want to use water instead of super coolant). 

Have fun.